Carl Sandburg Quotes

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.

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

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

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

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

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

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

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

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

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.

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

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

When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.

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.

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

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.

Our lives are like a candle in the wind.

The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.

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

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.

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

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

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes.

The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over the harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

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

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

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.

And how should a beautiful, ignorant stream of water know it heads for an early release — out across the desert, running toward the Gulf, below sea level, to murmur its lullaby, and see the Imperial Valley rise out of burning sand with cotton blossoms, wheat, watermelons, roses, how should it know?

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.