Carl Sandburg Quotes

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

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

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

The moon is friend for the lonesome to talk to.

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

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.

Nothing happens unless first a dream.

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.

Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.

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

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 man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us. . . . 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.

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

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

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

Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you.

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

Life is an onion - you peel it year by year and sometimes cry.

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.

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

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

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

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

Let your heart look on white sea spray and be lonely. Love is a fool star. You and a ring of stars may mention my name and then forget me. Love is a fool star.

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

There is a music for lonely hearts nearly always. If the music dies down there is a silence. Almost the same as the movement of music. To know silence perfectly is to know music.

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.

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

And even now she beats her head against the bars in the same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place the railroads run to from Chicago where maybe there is romance and big things and real dreams that never go smash.

The past is a bucket of ashes

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

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.

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

The worst thing to happen to Lincoln - aside from the unfortunate incident at Ford's theatre - was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.

Tell no man anything, for no man listens Yet hold thy lips ready to speak.

I take you and pile high the memories. Death will break her claws on some I keep.

Our lives are like a candle in the wind.

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

So we all love a wild girl keeping a hold On a dream she wants.

The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since being shot by Booth was to have fallen into the hands of Carl Sandburg.

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

I am stone and steel of your sleeping numbers; I remember all you forget. I will die as many times as you make me over again.

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

God, let me remember all good losers.

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one.

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

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

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

a women is like a tea bag.it's only when she is in hot water that you realize how strong she is.

Somebody's little girl- how easy it is to make a sob story over who she once was and who she now is.

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.

Have I, have you, been too silent? Is there an easy crime of silence?

Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today. Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction. See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.

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

Why did he write to her, “I can’t live without you?” And why did she write to him “I can’t live without you?” For he went west and she went east and they both lived.

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

There are men and women so lonely they believe God, too, is lonely.

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

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning...proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

One Parting Why did he write to her, "I can't live without you"? And why did she write to him, "I can't live without you"? For he went west, she went east, And they both lived.

«عشقِ یک کارگر» ﺑﺎﺭﻫﺎ ﺑﻪ ﺧﻮﺩﮐﺸﯽ ﻓﮑﺮ ﮐﺮﺩه‌ام ﭼﺮﺍ ﮐﻪ ﻣﻦ ﯾﮏ ﮐﺎﺭﮔﺮ ﺳﺎﺩه‌ﺍﻡ ﻭ ﺗﻮ ﺁﻥ ﺯﻧﯽ، ﮐﻪ ﺩﻭﺳﺖ‌ﺩﺍﺭﺩ ﺷﻮﻫﺮﺵ ﭘﺰﺷﮏ ﺑﺎﺷﺪ. ﺍﻣﺎ ﺑﺎﺯ ﻫﻢ ﺍﻫﻤﯿﺘﯽ نمی‌دﻫﻢ ﻭ ﺣﺘﯽ ﻣﺤﮑﻢ‌ﺗﺮ ﺍﺯ ﻗﺒﻞ ﺁﺟﺮﻫﺎ ﺭﺍ ﺑﺮ ﺩﯾﻮﺍﺭ ﻣﯽ‌ﭼﯿﻨﻢ. ﺣﺘﯽ ﺯﯾﺒﺎﺗﺮ ﺍﺯ ﭘﯿﺶ ﺁﻭﺍﺯ می‌‌خوانم ﻭﻗﺘﯽ ﮐﻪ ﻓﺮﻗﻮﻥِ ﻣﻼﺕ ﺭﺍ ﺩﺭ ﺩﺳﺖ می‌گیرم. ﺍﻣﺎ ﻭﻗﺘﯽ ﮐﻪ ﻧﻮﺭ ﺧﻮﺭﺷﯿﺪ ﺩﺭﺳﺖ ﺑﻪ ﭼﺸﻤﺎﻧﻢ می‌خورد ﺍﻣﺎ ﻭﻗﺘﯽ ﮐﻪ ﻧﺮﺩﺑﺎﻥ‌ﻫﺎ ﺯﯾﺮ ﭘﺎﻫﺎﯾﻢ ﻣﯽﻟﺮﺯﻧﺪ ﺍﻣﺎ ﻭﻗﺘﯽ ﮐﻪ ﺣﺘﯽ ﺗﺮﺍﺯﻫﺎ ﻫﻢ ﺍﺷﺘﺒﺎه می‌کنند، ﻣﻦ ﺑﺎﺯ ﻫﻢ ﺩﻗﯿﻘﺎ ﺑﻪ ﺗﻮ ﻓﮑﺮ می‌کنم...

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. And when you spend it, spend it wisely so that you get the most for your expenditure.

His books were part of him. Each year of his life, it seemed, his books became more and more a part of him. This room, thirty by twenty feet, and the walls of shelves filled with books, had for him the murmuring of many voices. In the books of Herodotus, Tacitus, Rabelais, Thomas Browne, John Milton, and scores of others, he had found men of face and voice more real to him than many a man he had met for a smoke and a talk.

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he is a hoary and venerable antique — but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby — with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker.

Beware of advice—even this.

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.

Wishes left on your lips The mark of their wings. Regrets fly kites in your eyes.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

The shovel is brother to the gun.

Now I am here - now read me - give me a name.

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

The secret to happiness is to admire without desiring.

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.

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.

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.

Didn't you tie the mittens on her feet (Wednesday Evening's) extra special nice? Yes--she is an extra special nice pigeon. She cries for pity when she wants pity. And she shuts her eyes when she doesn't want to look at you. And if you look deep in her eyes when her eyes are open you will see lights there exactly like the lights on the pastures and the meadows when the mist is drifting on a Wednesday evening just between the twilight and gloaming.

Get off this estate." "What for?" "Because it's mine." "Where did you get it?" "From my father." "Where did he get it?" "From his father." "And where did he get it?" "He fought for it." "Well, I'll fight you for it.

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

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes. I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down, a sun dropped in the west. I tell you there is nothing in the world only an ocean of to-morrows, a sky of to-morrows.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work-- I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work.

Le poete est un animal marin qui vit sur terre et qui voudrait voler.

The worn tired stars say you shall die early and die dirty. The clean cold stars say you shall die late and die clean. The runaway stars say you shall never die at all, never at all.

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts. The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds. The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

Give me hunger, O you gods that sit and give The world its orders. 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, A voice to speak to me in the day end, A hand to touch me in the dark room Breaking the long loneliness.

Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar. Let me pry loose old walls. Let me lift and loosen old foundations. Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike. Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together. Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders. Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.

Night from a railroad car window is a great, dark, soft thing Broken across with slashes of light.

I CANNOT tell you now; When the wind's drive and whirl Blow me along no longer, And the wind's a whisper at last-- Maybe I'll tell you then-- some other time. When the rose's flash to the sunset Reels to the rack and the twist, And the rose is a red bygone, When the face I love is going And the gate to the end shall clang, And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long"-- Maybe I'll tell you then-- some other time. I never knew any more beautiful than you: I have hunted you under my thoughts, I have broken down under the wind And into the roses looking for you. I shall never find any greater than you.

The books awed her by size, thickness, the staggering mass of lines and words to read before she could read all of them. Then having read all of the books must she carry in her head all that knowledge from the books? This too staggered her. "Wouldn't my head feel queer?" she asked Elder Brewster. "Wouldn't my head feel heavy carrying so much knowledge? Could any of it spill out if there was too much?

The Lawyers Know Too Much THE LAWYERS, Bob, know too much. They are chums of the books of old John Marshall. They know it all, what a dead hand wrote, A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling, The bones of the fingers a thin white ash. The lawyers know a dead man’s thoughts too well. In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob, Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers, Too much hereinbefore provided whereas, Too many doors to go in and out of. When the lawyers are through What is there left, Bob? Can a mouse nibble at it And find enough to fasten a tooth in? Why is there always a secret singing When a lawyer cashes in? Why does a hearse horse snicker Hauling a lawyer away? The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue. The knack of a mason outlasts a moon. The hands of a plasterer hold a room together. The land of a farmer wishes him back again. Singers of songs and dreamers of plays Build a house no wind blows over. The lawyers—tell me why a hearse horse snickers hauling a lawyer’s bones.

HAPPINESS 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.

One summer afternoon I came home and found all the umbrellas sitting in the kitchen, with straw hats on, telling who they are. ... The umbrella that peels the potatoes with a pencil and makes a pink ink with the peelings stood up and said, "I am the umbrella that peels the potatoes with a pencil and makes a pink ink with the peelings." ... The umbrella that runs to the corner to get corners for the handkerchiefs stood up and said, "I am the umbrella that runs to the corner to get corners for the handkerchiefs." ... "I am the umbrella that holds up the sky. I am the umbrella the rain comes through. I am the umbrella that tells the sky when to begin raining and when to stop raining. "I am the umbrella that goes to pieces when the wind blows and then puts itself back together again when the wind goes down. I am the first umbrella, the last umbrella, the one and only umbrella all other umbrellas are named after, first, last and always." When the stranger finished this speech telling who he was and where he came from, all the other umbrellas sat still for a little while, to be respectful.

Did you name your pigeons with names?" asked Wiffle (the Chick). These three, the sandy and golden brown, all named themselves by where they came from. This is Chickamauga, here is Chattanooga, and this is Chattahoochee. And the other three all got their names from me when I was feeling high and easy. This is Blue Mist, here is Bubbles, and last of all take a look at Wednesday Evening in the Twilight and the Gloaming." Do you always call her Wednesday Evening in the Twilight and the Gloaming?" Not when I am making coffee from breakfast. If I am making coffee for breakfast then I just call her Wednesday Evening.

Once she had thrown a square of birch bark into the fire when her father came in the door. He might then have asked her why her quill pen had shaped a row of straight and crooked question marks and after each one an exclamation point--in rows of ten, perhaps forty running along--?! ?! ?! ?!--arranged in pairs or couples. If he had asked her what is this folderol and what can this nonsense mean she would have said the same she said when shaping them with her pen, one pair, one couple after another. "Each question mark stands for my ignorance and asks if I may learn and know the answer. And each exclamation point stands for my surprise at how little I know, my amazement at my vast ignorance, my utter astonishment at how much there is for me to learn.

Show me the telegrams they sent you, one every day for six days while they were walking six hundred miles on their pigeon toes." .. 1. Feet are as good as wings if you have to. Chickamauga. ... 3. In the night sleeping you forget whether you have wings or feet or neither. Chattahoochee. ... 6. Pity me. Far is far. Near is near. and there is no place like home when the yellow roses climb up the ladders and sing in the early summer. Pity me. Wednesday Evening In The Twilight And The Gloaming. .. Well, Wednesday Evening was the only one I noticed making any mention of the yellow roses in her telegram," Hatrack the Horse explained. Then the old man and the girl sat on the cracker box saying nothing, only listening to the yellow roses all on fire with early summer climbing up th ecrooked ladders, up and down and crossways, some of them leaning out and curving and nearly falling.

...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. The hard beginnings were forgotten and the struggles farther along. They became satisfied with themselves. Unity and common understanding there had been, enough to overcome rot and dissolution, enough to break through their obstacles. But the mockers came. And the deniers were heard. And vision and hope faded. And the custom of greeting became "What's the use?" And men whose forefathers would go anywhere, holding nothing impossible in the genius of man, joined the mockers and the deniers. They lost sight of what brought them along.