Quotes By Carl Sandburg

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool-and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool.

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

Nothing happens unless first we dream.

I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.

There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it.

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.

Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.

We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.

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

We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born.