Carl Sandburg Quotes & Sayings

Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water. — Carl Sandburg

There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust.
A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest
corner of it. — Carl Sandburg

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. — Carl Sandburg

Death comes once, let it be easy. — Carl Sandburg

Time is a sandpile we run our fingers in. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines of a doorknob with thumb-prints of dust, blood, dreams. — Carl Sandburg

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

POETRY: A sliver of the moon lost in the belly of a golden frog. — Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower. — Carl Sandburg

Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions. — Carl Sandburg

I am stone and steel of your sleeping numbers;
I remember all you forget.
I will die as many times
as you make me over again. — Carl Sandburg

There is no song to your singing. — Carl Sandburg

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 — Carl Sandburg

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

History is a living horse laughing at a wooden horse. History is a wind blowing where it listeth. History is no sure thing to bet on. History is a box of tricks with a lost key. History is a labyrinth of doors with sliding panels, a book of ciphers with the code in a cave of the Saragossa sea. History says, if it pleases, Excuse me, I beg your pardon, it will never happen again if I can help it. — Carl Sandburg

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself — Carl Sandburg

I remember in my early 20s when I felt I couldn't live past 30. I was learning how to write. I had a lot of hard work ahead of me. — Carl Sandburg

All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel and after the five years, lacking a month, I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker. — Carl Sandburg

If I added to their pride of America, I am happy. — Carl Sandburg

I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is the arithmetic of the easiest way and the primrose path, matched up with foam-flanked horses, bloody knuckles, and bones, on the hard ways to the stars. — Carl Sandburg

Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are. — Carl Sandburg

Such a Big miracle in such a tiny baby. Big things often have small beginnings A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. — Carl Sandburg

Be careful with your words, once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten. — Carl Sandburg

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. — Carl Sandburg

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to. — Carl Sandburg

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

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

My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall. — Carl Sandburg

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. — Carl Sandburg

What is there more of in the world than anything else? Ends. — Carl Sandburg

The people know what the land knows. — Carl Sandburg

The moon is friend for the lonesome to talk to. — Carl Sandburg

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

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

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

I remember the Chillicothe ballplayers grappling the Long Island ball players in a sixteen-inning game ended by darkness. And the shoulders of the Chillicothe players were a red smoke against the sundown and the shoulders of the Rock Island players were a yellow smoke against the sundown. And the umpire's voice was hoarse calling balls and strikes and outs and the umpire's throat fought in the dust for a song. — Carl Sandburg

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. — Carl Sandburg

I CANNOT tell you now;
When the wind's drive and whirl
Blow me along no longer,
And the wind's a whisper at last
Maybe I'll tell you then
some other time.
When the rose's flash to the sunset
Reels to the rack and the twist,
And the rose is a red bygone,
When the face I love is going
And the gate to the end shall clang,
And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long"
Maybe I'll tell you then
some other time.
I never knew any more beautiful than you:
I have hunted you under my thoughts,
I have broken down under the wind
And into the roses looking for you.
I shall never find any
greater than you. — Carl Sandburg

And the Sphinx broke its long silence:
Don't expect too much. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. — Carl Sandburg

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. And when you spend it, spend it wisely so that you get the most for
your expenditure. — Carl Sandburg

Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering. — Carl Sandburg

The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody's time never watches the foreman never talks back. — Carl Sandburg

Man is a long time coming. Man will yet win. Brother may yet line up with brother: This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.There are men who can't be bought. — Carl Sandburg

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

All politicians should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected. — Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time. — Carl Sandburg

The wind bit hard at Valley Forge one Christmas.
Soldiers tied rags on their feet.
Red footprints wrote on the snow ... — Carl Sandburg

The doorknobs open the doors. The windows are always either open or shut. We are always either upstairs or downstairs in this house. Everything is the same as it always was. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. — Carl Sandburg

Life goes before we know what it is. / One fool is enough in any house. / Even God gets tired of too much hallelujah. / Take it easy and live long as brothers. — Carl Sandburg

Faith is indispensable, and the world at times does not seem to have quite enough of it. It can and has accomplished what seems to be the impossible. Wars have been started and men and nations lost for the lack of it. Faith starts from the individual and builds men and nations. America was built by and on the faith of our ancestors. — Carl Sandburg

I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter. — Carl Sandburg

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes. — Carl Sandburg

The impact of television on our culture is ... indescribable. There's a certain sense in which it is nearly as important as the invention of printing. — Carl Sandburg

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. — Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer. — Carl Sandburg

It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down. And your eyes and the moon swept the valley. — Carl Sandburg

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. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a dance music measuring buck-and-wing follies along with the gravest and stateliest dead-marches. — Carl Sandburg

The sea is always the same: and yet the sea always changes. — Carl Sandburg

The greatest cunning is to have none at all. — Carl Sandburg

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper
sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.
The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes,
new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind,
and the old things go, not one lasts. — Carl Sandburg

Revolt and terror pay a price.
Order and law have a cost. — Carl Sandburg

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? — Carl Sandburg

To those who had ordered them to death one of them said: 'We die because the people are asleep ... you will die because the people will awaken'. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, 'Listen!' and 'Did you see it?' 'Did you hear it? What was it?' — Carl Sandburg

My first stringed instrument was a cigar box banjo where I cut and turned the pegs and strung the wires myself. — Carl Sandburg

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

The peace of great books be for you,
Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages,
Bleach of the light of years held in leather. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations. — Carl Sandburg

In the average newspaper there is not a complete suppression of stories that the sacred cows don't want printed. But rather what happens is that the stories get printed with stresses, colorations and emphasis that favor the sacred cows. — Carl Sandburg

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect. — Carl Sandburg

I am still studying verbs and the mystery of how they connect nouns. I am more suspicious of adjectives than at any other time in all my born days. — Carl Sandburg

Why does a hearse horse snicker, hauling a lawyer away? — Carl Sandburg

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

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. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a fresh morning spider-web telling a story of moonlit hours of weaving and waiting during a night. — Carl Sandburg

What if they gave a war and nobody came? — Carl Sandburg

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

Now is the time. It is never too late to start something. — Carl Sandburg

Time is a great teacher,
Who can live without hope? — Carl Sandburg

The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension. — Carl Sandburg

Somebody's little girl- how easy it is to make a sob story over who she once was and who she now is. — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a section of river-fog and moving boat-lights, delivered between bridges and whistles, so one says, 'Oh!' and another, 'How?' — Carl Sandburg

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the women don't get you then the whiskey must. — Carl Sandburg

His books were part of him. Each year of his life, it seemed, his books became more and more a part of him. This room, thirty by twenty feet, and the walls of shelves filled with books, had for him the murmuring of many voices. In the books of Herodotus, Tacitus, Rabelais, Thomas Browne, John Milton, and scores of others, he had found men of face and voice more real to him than many a man he had met for a smoke and a talk. — Carl Sandburg

In democracy both a deep reverence and a sense of the comic are requisite. — Carl Sandburg

Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it runs by. — Carl Sandburg

To be a good loser is to learn how to win. — Carl Sandburg

A tree is best measured when it is down - and so it is with people. — Carl Sandburg

The shovel is brother to the gun. — Carl Sandburg

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

The past is a bucket of ashes — Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a shuffling of boxes of illusions buckled with a strap of facts. — Carl Sandburg

A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us ... It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?' ... If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time - the stuff of life. — Carl Sandburg

And those who say, "I'll try anything once," often try nothing twice, three times, arriving late at the gate of dreams worth dying for. — Carl Sandburg