Carl Sandburg

I am! I have come through! I belong!

— Carl Sandburg

The shovel is the brother to the gun.

— Carl Sandburg

Now I am here - now read me - give me a name.

— Carl Sandburg

Beware of advice-even this.

— Carl Sandburg

The drum in a dream pounds loud to the dreamer.

— Carl Sandburg

If I added to their pride of America, I am happy.

— Carl Sandburg

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.

— Carl Sandburg

The people know what the land knows.

— Carl Sandburg

Poetry is the cipher key to the five mystic wishes packed in a hollow silver bullet fed to a flying fish.

— Carl Sandburg

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.

— Carl Sandburg

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

— Carl Sandburg

Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines of a doorknob with thumb-prints of dust, blood, dreams.

— Carl Sandburg

Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.

— Carl Sandburg

I take you and pile high the memories. Death will break her claws on some I keep.

— Carl Sandburg

Newspapers tell beforehand what is going to happen - maybe.

— Carl Sandburg

To never see a fool you lock yourself in your room and smash the looking-glass.

— Carl Sandburg

A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out…

— Carl Sandburg

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

— Carl Sandburg

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

— Carl Sandburg

All we need to begin with is a # dream that we can do better than before. All we need to have…

— Carl Sandburg

There is a formal poetry perfect only in form?the number of syllables, the designated and required stresses of accent, the rhymes if…

— 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

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…

— Carl Sandburg

Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands, come off the whisper of the silk hangers, the lap of the…

— Carl Sandburg

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for…

— Carl Sandburg

“The books awed her by size, thickness, the staggering mass of lines and words to read before she could read all of…

— Carl Sandburg

“Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar. Let me pry loose old walls. Let…

— Carl Sandburg

Faith is indispensable, and the world at times does not seem to have quite enough of it. It can and has accomplished…

— Carl Sandburg

I remember the Chillicothe ballplayers grappling the Long Island ball players in a sixteen-inning game ended by darkness. And the shoulders of…

— Carl Sandburg

All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began…

— Carl Sandburg

“Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work-- I am the grass; I cover all.…

— Carl Sandburg

Always the path of American destiny has been into the unknown. Always there arose enough reserves of strength, balances of sanity, portions…

— Carl Sandburg

“A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether…

— Carl Sandburg

“Once she had thrown a square of birch bark into the fire when her father came in the door. He might then…

— Carl Sandburg

“Show me the telegrams they sent you, one every day for six days while they were walking six hundred miles on their…

— Carl Sandburg

What of the Wright boys in Dayton? Just around the corner they had a shop and did a bicycle business-and they wanted…

— Carl Sandburg

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong and the final decisions are made in silent rooms. Tell him to be…

— Carl Sandburg

“...when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found. They forgot where they came from. They lost sight…

— Carl Sandburg

“HAPPINESS I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell      me what is happiness. And I went to…

— Carl Sandburg

Time says hush: by the gong of time you live. Listen and you hear time saying you were silent long before you…

— Carl Sandburg