Carl sandburg quotes

To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damned hard.

Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.

Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.

A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.

All we need to begin with is a #‎ dream that we can do better than before. All we need to have is faith, and that dream will come true. All we need to do is act, and the time for action is now.

Look out how you use proud words. When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back. They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can't hear you calling. Look out how you use proud words.

Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks, waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.

I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.

When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.

I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

Love your neighbor as yourself but don't take down your fence.

What is there more of in the world than anything else? Ends.

Who else speaks for the Family of Man? They are in tune and step with constellations of universal law.

Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it until the test comes.

Gather the stars if you wish it so Gather the songs and keep them. Gather the faces of women. Gather for keeping years and years. And then... Loosen your hands, let go and say good-bye. Let the stars and songs go. Let the faces and years go. Loosen your hands and say good-bye.

Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.

I want to do the right thing, but often I don't know just what the right thing is. Every day I know I have come short of what I would like to have done. Yet as the years pass and I see the very world itself, with its oceans and mountains and plains, as something unfinished, a peculiar little satisfaction hunts out the corners of my heart. Sunsets and evening shadows find me regretful at task's undone, but sleep and the dawn and the air of the morning touch me with freshening hopes. Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny.

Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.

I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.

We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.

A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.

I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision.

Time says hush: by the gong of time you live. Listen and you hear time saying you were silent long before you came to life and you will again be silent long after you leave it, why not be a little silent now? Hush yourself, noisy little man. Time hushes all: the gong of time rang for you to come out of the hush and you were born. The gong of time will ring for you to go back to the same hush you came from. Winners and losers, the weak and the strong, those who say little and try to say it well, and those who babble and prattle their lives away, time hushes all.

I was up day and night with Lincoln for years. I couldn't have picked a better companion.

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.

I glory in this world of men and women, torn with troubles, yet living on to love and laugh through it all.

There is a wolf in me... - I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline. The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets, one waits.

For we know when a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found. They forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along.

A tree is best measured when it is down - and so it is with people.

There is only one child in the world and the Child’s name is All Children.

Come clean with a child heart Laugh as peaches in the summer wind Let rain on a house roof be a song Let the writing on your face be a smell of apple orchards on late June.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

Poetry is an art practiced with the terribly plastic material of human language.

Poetry is a section of river-fog and moving boat-lights, delivered between bridges and whistles, so one says, 'Oh!' and another, 'How?'

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.

There is a warning love sends and the cost of it is never written till long afterward.

And those who say, "I'll try anything once," often try nothing twice, three times, arriving late at the gate of dreams worth dying for.

There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted.

Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes. Today is here. If you don't know what to do, sit still and listen. You may hear something. Nobody knows.

Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.

Whenever a people or an institution forget its hard beginnings, it is beginning to decay.

To be a good loser is to learn how to win.

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.

Be careful with your words, once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten.

After the sunset on the prairie, there are only the stars

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

In the average newspaper there is not a complete suppression of stories that the sacred cows don't want printed. But rather what happens is that the stories get printed with stresses, colorations and emphasis that favor the sacred cows.

Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension.

Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers.

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.

Money buys everything except love, personality, freedom, immortality, silence, peace.

If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell

Tongues wrangled dark at a man. He buttoned his overcoat and stood alone. In a snowstorm, red hollyberries, thoughts, he stood alone.

By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul.

Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.

Poetry is a type-font design for an alphabet of fun, hate, love, death.

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.

Faith is indispensable, and the world at times does not seem to have quite enough of it. It can and has accomplished what seems to be the impossible. Wars have been started and men and nations lost for the lack of it. Faith starts from the individual and builds men and nations. America was built by and on the faith of our ancestors.

Men of ideas vanish when freedom vanishes.

Poetry is a fresh morning spider-web telling a story of moonlit hours of weaving and waiting during a night.

I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.

Time is the coin of life. Only you can determine how it will be spent.

Beware of advice-even this.

It is necessary ... for a man to go away by himself ... to sit on a rock ... and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?

If [America] forgets where she came from, if the people lose sight of what brought them along, if she listens to the deniers and mockers, then will begin the rot and dissolution.

Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?

When one has the right swing and enthusiasm, selling is not unlike hunting, a veritable sport. To scare up the game by preliminary talk and to know how long to follow it, to lose your gain through poorly directed argument, to hang on to game that finally eludes, to boldly confront, to quickly circle around, to keep on the trail, tireless and keen, till you have bagged some orders, there is some satisfaction in returning at night, tired of the trail, but proud of the days work done.

I have often wondered what it is an old building can do to you when you happen to know a little about things that went on long ago in that building.

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar.

The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody's time never watches the foreman never talks back.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease but the quacking duck gets shot.

What if they gave a war and nobody came?

Two bubbles found they had rainbows on their curves. They flickered out saying: "It was worth being a bubble, just to have held that rainbow thirty seconds.

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.

The greatest cunning is to have none at all.

Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.

Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.

Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.

Freedom is baffling: men having it often know not they have it till it is gone and they no longer have it.

Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

The impact of television on our culture is. . . indescribable. There's a certain sense in which it is nearly as important as the invention of printing.

Give me hunger, pain and want, Shut me out with shame and failure From your doors of gold and fame, Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger! But leave me a little love.

There is only one man in the world and his name is All Men. There is only one woman in the world and her name is All Women. There is only one child in the world and the child's name is All Children.

There are dreams stronger than death. Men and women die holding these dreams.

Nothing happens unless first we dream.

Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life.

Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio or looked at television. They had 'Loneliness' and knew what to do with it. They were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would work.

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong and the final decisions are made in silent rooms. Tell him to be different from other people if it comes natural and easy being different. Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives. Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural. Then he may understand Shakespeare and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov, Michael Faraday and free imaginations Bringing changes into a world resenting change. He will be lonely enough to have time for the work he knows as his own.

The single clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other.

Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters.

An ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps in your heart night and day, singing a little song, "Come and find me, come and find me."

It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?'...If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time-the stuff of life

In democracy both a deep reverence and a sense of the comic are requisite.

To never see a fool you lock yourself in your room and smash the looking-glass.

Our lives are like a candle in the wind.

There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart, The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust. A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

It is the business of little minds to shrink.

Always the path of American destiny has been into the unknown. Always there arose enough reserves of strength, balances of sanity, portions of wisdom to carry the nation through to a fresh start with ever-renewing vitality.

Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.

There is a formal poetry perfect only in form?the number of syllables, the designated and required stresses of accent, the rhymes if wantedthey come off with the skill of a solved crossword puzzle.

Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed.

The past is a bucket of ashes

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.

An expert is a damn fool a long way from home.

Now is the time. It is never too late to start something.

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the women don't get you then the whiskey must.

All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel and after the five years, lacking a month, I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker.

Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn child.

Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

Come on, you Do you want to live forever?

To those who had ordered them to death, one of them said: “We die because the people are asleep and you will die because the people will awaken.”

A liar goes in fine clothes, a liar goes in rags, a liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.

I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.

Revolt and terror pay a price. Order and law have a cost.

The greatest certainty in life is death. The greatest uncertainty is the time.