Carl Sandburg Quotes
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Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.
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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.
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I am the people - the mob - the crowd - the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
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I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.
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I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.
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When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin... in the dust, in the cool tombs.
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I want the respect of intelligent men but I will choose for myself the intelligent. I love art but I decide for myself what is art. I adore beauty but only my own soul shall tell me what is beauty. I worship God but I define and describe God for myself. I am an individual. The pleasure of my own heart shall be first to inform me when I have done good work.
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The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over the harbor and city on silent haunches, and then moves on.
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A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
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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. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now?
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Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.
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A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.
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I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
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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.
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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 …
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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. We may pull apart the petals of a rose or make chemical analysis of its perfume, but the mystic beauty of its form and odor is still a secret, locked in to where we have no keys.
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There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted.
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I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.
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The people know the salt of the sea and the strength of the winds lashing the corners of the earth. The people take the earth as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope. Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
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Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
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I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
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The United States is, not are. The Civil War was fought over a verb. Orval Faubus don't know that. But he gonna know, he gonna know.
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Tell me if the lovers are losers... tell me if any get more than the lovers.
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Man is a long time coming. Man will yet win. Brother may yet line up with brother: This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers. There are men who can't be bought.