A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven't told the girl you are smitten with her.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

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 Quote

I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you wake in the morning.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Life is like an onion: you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Nothing happens unless first a dream.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Nothing happens unless first we dream.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

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 Quote

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

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

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 Quote

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

There are 10 men in me and I do not know or understand one of them.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

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 Quote

There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

To be a good loser is to learn how to win.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.
- Carl Sandburg Quote

Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.
- Carl Sandburg Quote