Carl Sandburg Quotes

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

Now I am here - now read me - give me a name.

Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders.

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

Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.

"Love is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely "

love is a deep and a dark and a lonely
and you take it deep take it dark
and take it with a lonely winding
and when the winding gets too lonely
then may come the windflowers
and the breath of wind over many flowers
winding its way out of many lonely flowers
waiting in rainleaf whispers
waiting in dry stalks of noon
wanting in a music of windbreaths
so you can take love as it comes keening
as it comes with a voice and a face
and you make a talk of it
talking to yourself a talk worth keeping
and you put it away for a keen keeping
and you find it to be a hoarding
and you give it away and yet it stays hoarded

like a book read over and over again
like one book being a long row of books
like leaves of windflowers bending low
and bending to be never broken

"They are lovely pigeons to look at and their eyes are full of lessons to learn.."
They came back yesterday, they came back home," was the answer. "They came back limping on their feet with their toes turned in so far they nearly turned backward.
Every day the last six days I get a telegram, six telegrams from six pigeons — and at last they come home.

You must expect to be in several lost causes before you die.

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

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

"One Parting

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, she went east,
And they both lived."

Someday they'll give a war and nobody will come.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

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; they walk off proud; they can’t hear you calling -
Look out how you use proud words.

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.