Quotes By Carl Sandburg

Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.

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

We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.

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

There have been as many varieties of socialists as there are wild birds that fly in the woods and sometimes go up and on through the clouds.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.

A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.

I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.

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

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

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.

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

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