Home > Author > Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg QUOTES

Carl Sandburg QUOTES

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

― Carl Sandburg

2 " A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us. . . . It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?' . . . If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time—the stuff of life. "

― Carl Sandburg

3 " Come clean with a child heart
Laugh as peaches 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 , Honey and Salt

4 " A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he is a hoary and venerable antique — but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby — with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker. "

― Carl Sandburg

5 " Tell no man anything, for no man listens
Yet hold thy lips ready to speak. "

― Carl Sandburg

6 " Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today.
Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction.
See whether wisdom is just a lot of language. "

― Carl Sandburg , Honey and Salt

7 " A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on. "

― Carl Sandburg

8 " Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance. "

― Carl Sandburg

9 " 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

10 " Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. "

― Carl Sandburg

11 " I've written some poetry I don't understand myself "

― Carl Sandburg

12 " I'm either going to be a writer or a bum. "

― Carl Sandburg

13 " 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

14 " Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you. "

― Carl Sandburg

15 " A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. "

― Carl Sandburg

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

― Carl Sandburg

17 " 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 , Good Morning, America

18 " Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it runs by. "

― Carl Sandburg

19 " 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; they walk off proud; they can’t hear you calling -
Look out how you use proud words. "

― Carl Sandburg

20 " Nothing happens unless first a dream. "

― Carl Sandburg , The Complete Poems