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.

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

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

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

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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

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

The squeaky wheel gets the grease but the quacking duck gets shot.

A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.

I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.

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

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

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.

The single clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other.