Quotes By Carl Sandburg

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.

I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie.

I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out.

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

Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.

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

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

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.

I have often wondered what it is an old building can do to you when you happen to know a little about things that went on long ago in that building.

I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.

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.

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.

Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence.

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

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

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.

I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.

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

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.

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

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

I stayed away from mathematics not so much because I knew it would be hard work as because of the amount of time I knew it would take, hours spent in a field where I was not a natural.

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

I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago.

I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.

Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.

I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.

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