Carl Sandburg Quotes

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

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.

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar.

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

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.

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

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

Nothing happens unless first we dream.

Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

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

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.

For we know when a nation goes down and never comes back, 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.

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

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

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

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.

Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks, waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Our lives are like a candle in the wind.

The fog comes on little cat feet.

Hog butcher for the world, Tool maker, stacker of wheat, Player with railroads and the nation's freight handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of big shoulders.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

An ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps in your heart night and day, singing a little song, "Come and find me, come and find me."

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.

Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven't told the girl you are smitten with her.

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

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