Carl Sandburg Quotes

Tell no man anything, for no man listens
Yet hold thy lips ready to speak.

Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today.
Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction.
See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.

What of the Athenian last year on whose bosom
a committee hung a medal to say to the world
here is a champion heavyweight poet?
He stood on a two-masted schooner
and flung his medal far out on the sea bosom.
“And why not?
Has anybody ever given the ocean a medal?
Who of the poets equals the music of the sea?
And where is a symbol of the people
unless it is the sea?

And even now she beats her head against the bars in the same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place the railroads run to from Chicago where maybe there is
romance
and big things
and real dreams
that never go smash.

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

There are some people so lonely, they think God is lonely too-

"...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. The hard beginnings were forgotten and the struggles farther along. They became satisfied with themselves. Unity and common understanding there had been, enough to overcome rot and dissolution, enough to break through their obstacles. But the mockers came. And the deniers were heard. And vision and hope faded. And the custom of greeting became "What's the use?" And men whose forefathers would go anywhere, holding nothing impossible in the genius of man, joined the mockers and the deniers. They lost sight of what brought them along."

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.

Why does a hearse horse snicker, hauling a lawyer away?

"Did you name your pigeons with names?" asked Wiffle (the Chick).
These three, the sandy and golden brown, all named themselves by where they came from. This is Chickamauga, here is Chattanooga, and this is Chattahoochee. And the other three all got their names from me when I was feeling high and easy. This is Blue Mist, here is Bubbles, and last of all take a look at Wednesday Evening in the Twilight and the Gloaming."
Do you always call her Wednesday Evening in the Twilight and the Gloaming?"
Not when I am making coffee from breakfast. If I am making coffee for breakfast then I just call her Wednesday Evening.

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

Revolt and terror pay a price.
Order and law have a cost.

Here is dust remembers it was a rose
one time and lay in a woman’s hair.
Here is dust remembers it was a woman
one time and in her hair lay a rose.
Oh things one time dust, what else now is it
you dream and remember of old days? — Carl Sandburg, “Dust,” The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition January 6, 2003) Originally published 1950.

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.

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