Carl Sandburg Quotes

"Nothing happens unless first we 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."

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

"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."

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

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

"Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny."

"The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to."

"I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way."

"A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake."

"To be a good loser is to learn how to win."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away."

"A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man."

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

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

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

"There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it."

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

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

"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."

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

"I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way."

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