Top 10 Most Famous Carl Sandburg Quotes
For we know when a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found. They forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
Nothing happens unless first we dream.
— Carl Sandburg
Be careful with your words, once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten.
— Carl Sandburg
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.
— Carl Sandburg
Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
— Carl Sandburg
Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.
— Carl Sandburg
I am an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going but I’m on my way.
— Carl Sandburg
A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.
— Carl Sandburg
Love your neighbor as yourself but don’t take down your fence.
— Carl Sandburg
Inspirational Carl Sandburg Quotes
I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going but I’m on my way.’
— Carl Sandburg
Such a big miracle in such a tiny baby. Big things often have small beginnings. A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on…A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life.
— Carl Sandburg
The moon is friend for the lonesome to talk to.
— Carl Sandburg
Nothing happens unless first a dream.
— Carl Sandburg
My name is truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
— Carl Sandburg
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.’
— Carl Sandburg
Let your heart look on a white sea spray and be lonely…You and a ring of stars may mention my name and then forget me.
— Carl Sandburg
By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars has a soul.
— Carl Sandburg
There is a music for lonely hearts nearly always. If the music dies down there is a silence. Almost the same as the movement of music. To know silence perfectly is to know music.
— Carl Sandburg
Tell no man anything, for no man listens yet hold thy lips ready to speak.
— Carl Sandburg
After the sunsets on the prairie, there are only the stars.
— Carl Sandburg
A book is never a masterpiece: It becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.
— Carl Sandburg
I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.
— Carl Sandburg
And we all love a wild girl keeping a hold On a dream she wants.
— Carl Sandburg
Read the dictionary from A to izzard today. Get a vocabulary. Brush up your diction. See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.
— Carl Sandburg
Revolt and terror pay a price. Order and law have a cost.
— Carl Sandburg
Have I, Have you, been too silent? Is there an easy crime of silence?
— Carl Sandburg
Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it runs by.
— Carl Sandburg
The secret to happiness is to admire without desiring.
— Carl Sandburg
To know silence perfectly is to know music.
— Carl Sandburg
Enough small empty boxes thrown into a big empty box fill it full.
— Carl Sandburg
One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
— Carl Sandburg
Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life.
— Carl Sandburg
There are people who want to be everywhere at once, and they get nowhere.
— Carl Sandburg
Hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, yonder.
— Carl Sandburg
I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
— Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg Famous Quotes About Life, Time and Freedom
Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.
— Carl Sandburg
Time is a sandpile we run our fingers in.
— Carl Sandburg
Chicago: The city was hog butcher for the world, toolmaker, stacker of wheat…city of the big shoulders.
— Carl Sandburg
Come clean with a child heart Laugh as peaches in summer 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.
— Carl Sandburg
My father couldn’t sign his name, he made his mark on the CB&Q payroll sheet.
— Carl Sandburg
There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.
— Carl Sandburg
My mother was able to read scriptures in her native language, but she could not write, and I wrote of Abraham Lincoln, whose own mother could not read and write! I guess somewhere along in this you’ll find a story of America.
— Carl Sandburg
Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about and hurts the one who is possessed it more than the one against whom it is directed.
— Carl Sandburg
I take you and pile high the memories. Death will break her claws on some I keep.
— Carl Sandburg
To be out of jail….to eat regular…to get what I write printed…a little love at home and a little nice affection hither and you over the American landscape…[and] to sing every day.
— Carl Sandburg
Give me hunger, pain, and want, Shut me out with shame and failure From your doors of gold and fame, give me your shabbiest, weirdest hunger! But leave me a little love.
— Carl Sandburg
Our lives are like a candle in the wind.
— Carl Sandburg
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.
— Carl Sandburg
There are some people who can receive a truth by no other means than to have their understanding shocked and insulted.
— Carl Sandburg
Sometimes they’ll give war and nobody will come.
— Carl Sandburg
Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline. The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets, one waits.
— Carl Sandburg
The past is a bucket of ashes.
— Carl Sandburg
We can never possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.
— Carl Sandburg
There is only one child in the world and the child’s name is All Children.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
I won’t take religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.
— Carl Sandburg
Someday they will give war and nobody will come.
— Carl Sandburg
The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
— Carl Sandburg
Wishes left on your lips The mark of their wings. Regrets fly kites in your eyes.
— Carl Sandburg
A tough will counts. So does desire. So does a rich soft wanting. Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
— Carl Sandburg
There are some people so lonely; they think God is lonely too
— Carl Sandburg
Love your neighbor as yourself, but don’t take down the fence.
— Carl Sandburg
To be a good loser is to learn how to win.
— Carl Sandburg
Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.
— Carl Sandburg
A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out if elected.
— Carl Sandburg
Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom if you listen.
— Carl Sandburg
The greatest cunning to have is none at all.
— Carl Sandburg
Freedom is baffling: men having it often know not they have it till it is gone and they no longer have it.
— Carl Sandburg
Men of ideas vanish when freedom vanishes.
— Carl Sandburg
It’s the business of little minds to shrink.
— Carl Sandburg
The people know what the land knows.
— Carl Sandburg
You know being born is more important to you. You know nothing else was ever so important to you.
— Carl Sandburg
A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order, in order to die he must first awake.
— Carl Sandburg
Who am I, Where have I been, and Where am I going?
— Carl Sandburg
Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn child.
— Carl Sandburg
Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
— Carl Sandburg
All human actions are equivalent…and all are on principle doomed to failure.
— Carl Sandburg
I learned you can’t trust the judgment of good friends.
— Carl Sandburg
I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out.
— Carl Sandburg
Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next time comes.
— Carl Sandburg
Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio or looked at television. They had ‘Loneliness’ and knew what to do with it. They were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would work.
— Carl Sandburg
Money buys everything except love, personality, freedom, immortality, silence, peace.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
Now is the time. It is never too late to start something.
— Carl Sandburg
I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.
— Carl Sandburg
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.
— Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg Quotes about Poetry
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.
— Carl Sandburg
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.
— Carl Sandburg
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
— Carl Sandburg
Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
— Carl Sandburg
I’ve written some poetry I don’t understand myself.
— Carl Sandburg
Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.
— Carl Sandburg
I’m either going to be a writer or a bum.
— 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.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
More Best Carl Sandburg Quotes
A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.
— Carl Sandburg
Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.
— Carl Sandburg
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
— Carl Sandburg
Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don’t worry about my destiny.
— Carl Sandburg
To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard.
— 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.
— Carl Sandburg
When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder.
— Carl Sandburg
Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.
— Carl Sandburg
The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
— Carl Sandburg
I couldn’t see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter.
— Carl Sandburg
The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
— Carl Sandburg
Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
— Carl Sandburg
Love your neighbor as yourself; but don’t take down the fence.
— Carl Sandburg
Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
— Carl Sandburg
Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes.
— Carl Sandburg
Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.
— Carl Sandburg
A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
I won’t take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.
— Carl Sandburg
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
We read Robert Browning’s poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.
— Carl Sandburg
I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.
— Carl Sandburg
My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
You remember some bedrooms you have slept in. There are bedrooms you like to remember and others you would like to forget.
— Carl Sandburg
I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way.
— Carl Sandburg
Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.
— Carl Sandburg
We don’t have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
There was always the consolation that if I didn’t like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it.
— Carl Sandburg
The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help.
— Carl Sandburg
Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven’t told the girl you are smitten with her.
— Carl Sandburg
There are 10 men in me and I do not know or understand one of them.
— Carl Sandburg
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.
— Carl Sandburg
I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn’t learned a thing I didn’t know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.
— Carl Sandburg