Carl Sandburg
I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Moving
I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.Collection: New
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.Collection: Anger
Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.Collection: Love
We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.Collection: Poetry
The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.Collection: Space
I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends.Collection: Trust
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.Collection: Time
To be a good loser is to learn how to win.Collection: Motivational
Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.Collection: Life
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.Collection: Happiness
When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.Collection: Poetry
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.Collection: War
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.Collection: Respect
Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder.Collection: Nature
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.Collection: Poetry
Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.Collection: Poetry
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.Collection: Society
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.Collection: Society
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.Collection: Poetry
A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.Collection: Life
Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.Collection: Poetry
Nothing happens unless first we dream.Collection: Dreams
All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.Collection: Failure
I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.Collection: Poetry
Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.Collection: Wisdom
There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.
Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence.
I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.
To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard.
Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny.
Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
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.
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 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.
I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out.
The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
You remember some bedrooms you have slept in. There are bedrooms you like to remember and others you would like to forget.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.
I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.
There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it.
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.