Top 274 Quotes & Sayings by Carl Sandburg - Page 3

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.

A tree is best measured when it is down - and so it is with people.

A liar goes in fine clothes, a liar goes in rags, a liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.

Who else speaks for the Family of Man? They are in tune and step with constellations of universal law.

What if they gave a war and nobody came?

There is a warning love sends and the cost of it is never written till long afterward.

It is the business of little minds to shrink.

Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn child.

There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted.

Always the path of American destiny has been into the unknown. Always there arose enough reserves of strength, balances of sanity, portions of wisdom to carry the nation through to a fresh start with ever-renewing vitality.

All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel and after the five years, lacking a month, I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker.

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.

I glory in this world of men and women, torn with troubles, yet living on to love and laugh through it all.

The impact of television on our culture is. . . indescribable. There's a certain sense in which it is nearly as important as the invention of printing.

The shovel is the brother to the gun.

I was up day and night with Lincoln for years. I couldn't have picked a better companion.

In the average newspaper there is not a complete suppression of stories that the sacred cows don't want printed. But rather what happens is that the stories get printed with stresses, colorations and emphasis that favor the sacred cows.

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.

What is there more of in the world than anything else? Ends.

Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it until the test comes.

Time is the coin of our live. We must take care how we spend it.

Poetry is an art practiced with the terribly plastic material of human language.

And how should a beautiful, ignorant stream of water know it heads for an early release — out across the desert, running toward the Gulf, below sea level, to murmur its lullaby, and see the Imperial Valley rise out of burning sand with cotton blossoms, wheat, watermelons, roses, how should it know?

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.

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar.

Tongues wrangled dark at a man. He buttoned his overcoat and stood alone. In a snowstorm, red hollyberries, thoughts, he stood alone.

The woman named Tomorrow sits with a hairpin in her teeth and takes her time

There is only one child in the world and the Child’s name is All Children.

out of great Russia came three dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die for: Bread, Peace, Land.

Life goes before we know what it is. / One fool is enough in any house. / Even God gets tired of too much hallelujah. / Take it easy and live long as brothers.

Poetry is a type-font design for an alphabet of fun, hate, love, death.

Nothing happens... but first a dream.

Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline. The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets, one waits.

Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.

To those who had ordered them to death, one of them said: “We die because the people are asleep and you will die because the people will awaken.”

Faith is indispensable, and the world at times does not seem to have quite enough of it. It can and has accomplished what seems to be the impossible. Wars have been started and men and nations lost for the lack of it. Faith starts from the individual and builds men and nations. America was built by and on the faith of our ancestors.

Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters.

The past is a bucket of ashes

Poetry is a fresh morning spider-web telling a story of moonlit hours of weaving and waiting during a night.

Gather the stars if you wish it so Gather the songs and keep them. Gather the faces of women. Gather for keeping years and years. And then... Loosen your hands, let go and say good-bye. Let the stars and songs go. Let the faces and years go. Loosen your hands and say good-bye.

Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, 'Listen!' and 'Did you see it?' 'Did you hear it? What was it?'

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.

In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are a series of little silver waterfalls in the moon.

POETRY: A sliver of the moon lost in the belly of a golden frog.

You know being born is important to you. You know nothing else was ever so important to you.

Time is a sandpile we run our fingers in.

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.

The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody's time never watches the foreman never talks back.

After the sunset on the prairie, there are only the stars

There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart, The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust. A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it.

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

So I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.

History is a living horse laughing at a wooden horse. History is a wind blowing where it listeth. History is no sure thing to bet on. History is a box of tricks with a lost key. History is a labyrinth of doors with sliding panels, a book of ciphers with the code in a cave of the Saragossa sea. History says, if it pleases, Excuse me, I beg your pardon, it will never happen again if I can help it.

There are people who want to be everywhere at once, and they get nowhere

Enough small empty boxes thrown into a big empty box fill it full.

By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul.

When one has the right swing and enthusiasm, selling is not unlike hunting, a veritable sport. To scare up the game by preliminary talk and to know how long to follow it, to lose your gain through poorly directed argument, to hang on to game that finally eludes, to boldly confront, to quickly circle around, to keep on the trail, tireless and keen, till you have bagged some orders, there is some satisfaction in returning at night, tired of the trail, but proud of the days work done.

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