Carl Sandburg Quotes

159 Sourced Quotes

Lips half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers.

Carl Sandburg
Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.

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

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
His books were part of him. Each year of his life, it seemed, his books became more and more a part of him. This room, thirty by twenty feet, and the walls of shelves filled with books, had for him the murmuring of many voices. In the books of Herodotus, Tacitus, Rabelais, Thomas Browne, John Milton, and scores of others, he had found men of face and voice more real to him than many a man he had met for a smoke and a talk.

Carl Sandburg
The name of an iron man goes round the world.
It takes a long time to forget an iron man.

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

Carl Sandburg
I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

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

Carl Sandburg
Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.

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

Carl Sandburg
An ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps in your heart night and day, singing a little song, Come and find me, come and find me.

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, weariest hunger! But leave me a little love.

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
The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?

Carl Sandburg
There are men and women so lonely they believe God, too, is lonely.

Carl Sandburg
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.

Carl Sandburg
Let your heart look on white sea spray and be lonely. Love is a fool star. You and a ring of stars may mention my name and then forget me. Love is a fool star.

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

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
Love your neighbour as yourself but don't take down your fence.

Carl Sandburg
Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.

Carl Sandburg
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.

Carl Sandburg
Have you a criminal lawyer in this burg?
We think so, but we haven't been able to prove it on him yet.

Carl Sandburg
A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.

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 won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.

Carl Sandburg
Look out how you use proud words.
When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back.
They wear long boots, hard boots.

Carl Sandburg
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Carl Sandburg