Carl Sandburg Quotes
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I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie.
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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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A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
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My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall.
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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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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 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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Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.
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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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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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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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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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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 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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I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
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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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I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.
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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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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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I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
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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.
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Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
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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.