Quotes By Carl Sandburg

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

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

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.

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.

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.

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

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

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

When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.

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.

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

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.

I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends.

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

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

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

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.