Carl Sandburg Quotes

After the sunset on the prairie, there are only the stars

To know silence perfectly is to know music.

An inquiry which I once made into the psychology of the Indian sign language with a view to discovering a possible relation between it and Greek manual gesture as displayed in ancient graphic art, led to the conclusion that Indian rhythms arise rather in the centre of self-preservation than of self-consciousness. Which is only another way of saying that poetry is valued primarily by the aboriginal for the reaction it produces within himself rather than for any effect he is able to produce on others by means of it.

Our lives are like a candle in the wind.

Why did he write to her, “I can’t live without you?” And why did she write to him “I can’t live without you?” For he went west and she went east and they both lived.

There are men and women so lonely they believe God, too, is lonely.

Tell me if the lovers are losers... tell me if any get more than the lovers.

I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.

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

Life is an onion - you peel it year by year and sometimes cry.

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

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

The worn tired stars say
you shall die early and die dirty.
The clean cold stars say
you shall die late and die clean.

The runaway stars say
you shall never die at all,
never at all.

The shovel is brother to the gun.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short.