Carl Sandburg famous quotes

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

#Life #Love Yourself #Literature

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Morning #Ocean #Sleep

Nothing happens unless first we dream.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Dream #Inspiration #Imagination

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

#Work #Writing #Carpe Diem

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

#Funny #Life #Motivational

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Life #Change #Time

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Writing #Echoes #Poetry

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

#Good Morning #Optimistic #Eye

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

#Happiness #Running #Hands

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Cheer #Giving #Literature

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

#Doors #Poetry #Leaving

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

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

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?
-- Carl Sandburg

#Inspirational #Reflection #Men

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Lonely #Loneliness #Learning

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
-- Carl Sandburg

#Night #Men #Light

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Happiness #Inner Peace #Secret

To be a good loser is to learn how to win.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Inspirational #Winning #Loser

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Dream #Needs #Action

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

#Money #Blessing #Roots

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

#Mistake #Done #Made

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

#Religious #Men #Religion

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

#Stars #Night #Soul

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Poetry #Literature #Poetry Is

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

#Respect #Ocean #Sea

Our lives are like a candle in the wind.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Life #Wisdom #Wind

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Years #Editors #Two

Time is the coin of our live. We must take care how we spend it.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Inspiration #Coins #Care

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

#Girl #Writing #Hair

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

#Math #Hands #Numbers

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

#Self Respect #Coins

In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are a series of little silver waterfalls in the moon.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Moon #Night #Vegetables

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

#Greatness #Coins #Determine

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

#Art #Children #Pregnancy

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Hurt #Anger #Passion

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Sight #May #Lost

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Talking #Political #Rabbits

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Moon #Lonesome

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

#Children #Names #World

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

#Peace #War #Giving

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

#Single #America #Creative

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

#Birthday #Optimism #Unexpected

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

#Patience #Nature #Roots

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Curves #Two #Rainbow

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Lonely #Strong #Brother

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Math #Numbers #Pigeons

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Sight #America #People

What if they gave a war and nobody came?
-- Carl Sandburg

#War #What If

There are people who want to be everywhere at once, and they get nowhere
-- Carl Sandburg

#People #Want

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Poetry #Invisible #Keepsakes

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

#Poetry Is #Barriers

Revolt and terror pay a price. Order and law have a cost.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Law #Order #Pay

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

#Eagles #Christian Inspirational #Literature

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

#Eight #Firefighter #Luck

Beware of advice-even this.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Writing #Advice

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

#Happiness #Laughter #Entrepreneur

Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Horizon #Fading #Explanation

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?
-- Carl Sandburg

#Beautiful #Running #Nature

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Life #Writing #Years

It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down. And your eyes and the moon swept the valley.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Coffee #Eye #Moon

I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Art #Poetry

The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Integrity #Intelligence #Cunning

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

#World #Ends

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

#Freedom #Men #Gone

Such a Big miracle in such a tiny baby. Big things often have small beginnings A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Baby #Miracle #Tiny

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

#Glasses #Locks #Rooms

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

#Liars #Lying #Deceit

All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Book #Writing #Trying

The marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading "Keep Off.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Reading #Men #Conformity

The shovel is the brother to the gun.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Brother #Military #Gun

The impact of television on our culture is just indescribable.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Impact #Culture #Television

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

#Loss #Weight Loss #Too Late

And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers. Go running back to dust and mist.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Running #Dust #Poetry

Hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, yonder.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Hope #Echoes #Ties

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

#Tests #Valor

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Beautiful #Knowing #Lasts

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar...
-- Carl Sandburg

#Eagles #Want #Soar

The drum in a dream pounds loud to the dreamer.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Dream #Science #Pounds

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Long #Looks #Use

I am! I have come through! I belong!
-- Carl Sandburg

#Birth

To those who had ordered them to death one of them said: 'We die because the people are asleep... you will die because the people will awaken'.
-- Carl Sandburg

#People #Revolution #Said

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work. I am the grass. I cover all.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Work #Body #Grass

Lips half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Dream #Wall #Eye

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
-- Carl Sandburg

#Loneliness #Men #Rocks

People lie because they don't remember clear what they saw. People lie because they can't help making a story better than it was the way it happened.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Lying #People #Stories

I remember in my early 20s when I felt I couldn't live past 30. I was learning how to write. I had a lot of hard work ahead of me.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Hard Work #Writing #Past

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

#Dark #Men #Solitude

Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Prayer #Hammers #Steel

The woman named Tomorrow sits with a hairpin in her teeth and takes her time
-- Carl Sandburg

#Teeth #Tomorrow

The wind bit hard at Valley Forge one Christmas. Soldiers tied rags on their feet. Red footprints wrote on the snow . . .
-- Carl Sandburg

#War #Wind #Feet

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Destiny #America #Balance

If I added to their pride of America, I am happy.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Pride #America

So I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Strong #Cities #Giving

Enough small empty boxes thrown into a big empty box fill it full.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Empty #Enough #Boxes

Time is a sandpile we run our fingers in.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Running #Fingers

Poetry is a diary kept by a sea creature who lives on land and wishes he could fly.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Sea #Land #Wish

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

#Men #Law #Unity

Time is a great teacher, Who can live without hope?
-- Carl Sandburg

#Hope #Teacher #Time

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.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Impact #Important #Culture

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

#Night #Years #Day And Night

I been a wanderin' Early and late, New York City To the Golden Gate An' it looks like I'm never gonna cease my Wanderin'.
-- Carl Sandburg

#New York #Cities #Looks