Top quotes by Carl Sandburg

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me. Votes: 23

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work. Votes: 20

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. Votes: 20

When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on. Votes: 20

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. Votes: 18

Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio or looked at television. They had 'Loneliness' and knew what to do with it. They were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would work. Votes: 18

The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect. Votes: 15

I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world. Votes: 15

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. Votes: 14

Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child. Votes: 13

Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven't told the girl you are smitten with her. Votes: 12

Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence. Votes: 11

We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough. Votes: 10

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. Votes: 10

Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment. Votes: 9

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. Votes: 9

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. Votes: 9

Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are. Votes: 9

I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way. Votes: 9

All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure. Votes: 8

We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written. Votes: 8

I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor. Votes: 7

Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny. Votes: 7

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. Votes: 6

I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends. Votes: 4

A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake. Votes: 4

We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born. Votes: 3

I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out. Votes: 2

I'm either going to be a writer or a bum. Votes: 1

Give me hunger,O you gods that sit and giveThe world its orders.Give me hunger, pain and want,Shut me out with shame and failureFrom your doors of gold and fame,Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!But leave me a little love,A voice to speak to me in the day end,A hand to touch me in the dark roomBreaking the long loneliness." Votes: 1

Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head. Votes: 0

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer. Votes: 0

The past is a bucket of ashes Votes: 0

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. Votes: 0

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. Votes: 0

My first stringed instrument was a cigar box banjo where I cut and turned the pegs and strung the wires myself. Votes: 0

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder. Votes: 0

Hog butcher for the world, Tool maker, stacker of wheat, Player with railroads and the nation's freight handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of big shoulders. Votes: 0

Poetry is an enumeration of birds, bees, babies, butterflies, bugs, bambinos, babayagas, and bipeds, beating their way up bewildering bastions. Votes: 0

The greatest certainty in life is death. The greatest uncertainty is the time. Votes: 0

Poetry is the cipher key to the five mystic wishes packed in a hollow silver bullet fed to a flying fish. Votes: 0

The peace of great books be for you, Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages, Bleach of the light of years held in leather. Votes: 0

Time is the coin of life. Only you can determine how it will be spent. Votes: 0

There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it. Votes: 0

It is necessary ... for a man to go away by himself ... to sit on a rock ... and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going? Votes: 0

Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. Votes: 0

Poetry is a sequence of dots and dashes, spelling depths, crypts, cross-lights, and moon wisps. Votes: 0

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." Votes: 0

I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision Votes: 0

There is a formal poetry perfect only in form?the number of syllables, the designated and required stresses of accent, the rhymes if wantedthey come off with the skill of a solved crossword puzzle. Votes: 0

The greatest cunning is to have none at all. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way. Votes: 0

Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension. Votes: 0

The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over the harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. Votes: 0

The fog comes on little cat feet. Votes: 0

I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty. Votes: 0

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. Votes: 0

Poetry is a fossil rock-print of a fin and a wing, with an illegible oath between. Votes: 0

I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman. Votes: 0

Poetry is a type-font design for an alphabet of fun, hate, love, death. Votes: 0

Alike and ever alike, we are on all continents in the need of love, food, clothing, work, speech, worship, sleep, games, dancing, fun. From tropics to arctics humanity live with these needs so alike, so inexorably alike. Votes: 0

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work- I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg. And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years,and passengers ask the conductor- What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work. Votes: 0

I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it. Votes: 0

Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief knotted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kite flying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring. Votes: 0

Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers. Votes: 0

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way. Votes: 0

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes. Votes: 0

Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep. Votes: 0

Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions. Votes: 0

It is the business of little minds to shrink. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to. Votes: 0

To be a good loser is to learn how to win. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen. Votes: 0

Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn child. Votes: 0

Tongues wrangled dark at a man. He buttoned his overcoat and stood alone. In a snowstorm, red hollyberries, thoughts, he stood alone. Votes: 0

Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks, waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets. Votes: 0

People lie because they don't remember clear what they saw. People lie because they can't help making a story better than it was the way it happened. Votes: 0

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Votes: 0

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. Votes: 0

Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Votes: 0

In the average newspaper there is not a complete suppression of stories that the sacred cows don't want printed. But rather what happens is that the stories get printed with stresses, colorations and emphasis that favor the sacred cows. Votes: 0

Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline. The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets, one waits. Votes: 0

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth. Votes: 0

And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers. Go running back to dust and mist. Votes: 0

I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it Votes: 0

Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-haired child. Votes: 0

Why does a hearse horse snicker, hauling a lawyer away? Votes: 0

There have been as many varieties of socialists as there are wild birds that fly in the woods and sometimes go up and on through the clouds. Votes: 0

Nothing happens unless first we dream. Votes: 0

Tell no man anything, for no man listensYet hold thy lips ready to speak. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Come clean with a child heartLaugh as peaches in the summer windLet rain on a house roof be a songLet the writing on your facebe a smell of apple orchards on late June. Votes: 0

The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help. Votes: 0

Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines of a doorknob with thumb-prints of dust, blood, dreams. Votes: 0

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar... Votes: 0

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude. Votes: 0

Poetry is a fresh morning spider-web telling a story of moonlit hours of weaving and waiting during a night. Votes: 0

The squeaky wheel gets the grease but the quacking duck gets shot. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering. Votes: 0

a women is like a tea bag.it's only when she is in hot water that you realize how strong she is. Votes: 0

The wind bit hard at Valley Forge one Christmas. Soldiers tied rags on their feet. Red footprints wrote on the snow . . . Votes: 0

Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it until the test comes. Votes: 0

You remember some bedrooms you have slept in. There are bedrooms you like to remember and others you would like to forget. Votes: 0

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder. Votes: 0

I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this. Votes: 0

To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I want to do the right thing, but often I don't know just what the right thing is. Every day I know I have come short of what I would like to have done. Yet as the years pass and I see the very world itself, with its oceans and mountains and plains, as something unfinished, a peculiar little satisfaction hunts out the corners of my heart. Sunsets and evening shadows find me regretful at task's undone, but sleep and the dawn and the air of the morning touch me with freshening hopes. Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny. Votes: 0

Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower. Votes: 0

Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by. Votes: 0

Our lives are like a candle in the wind. Votes: 0

All we need to begin with is a #‎ dream that we can do better than before. All we need to have is faith, and that dream will come true. All we need to do is act, and the time for action is now. Votes: 0

Who else speaks for the Family of Man? They are in tune and step with constellations of universal law. Votes: 0

By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul. Votes: 0

There is a wolf in me... - I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go. Votes: 0

Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings. Votes: 0

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. Votes: 0

The single clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other. Votes: 0

There are dreams stronger than death. Men and women die holding these dreams. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Beware of advice-even this. Votes: 0

To never see a fool you lock yourself in your room and smash the looking-glass. Votes: 0

What if they gave a war and nobody came? Votes: 0

In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are a series of little silver waterfalls in the moon. Votes: 0

There are people who want to be everywhere at once, and they get nowhere Votes: 0

If [America] forgets where she came from, if the people lose sight of what brought them along, if she listens to the deniers and mockers, then will begin the rot and dissolution. Votes: 0

Two bubbles found they had rainbows on their curves. They flickered out saying: "It was worth being a bubble, just to have held that rainbow thirty seconds. Votes: 0

Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you. Votes: 0

Time is the coin of our live. We must take care how we spend it. Votes: 0

Nothing happens... but first a dream. Votes: 0

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. Votes: 0

Revolt and terror pay a price. Order and law have a cost. Votes: 0

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong and the final decisions are made in silent rooms. Tell him to be different from other people if it comes natural and easy being different. Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives. Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural. Then he may understand Shakespeare and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov, Michael Faraday and free imaginations Bringing changes into a world resenting change. He will be lonely enough to have time for the work he knows as his own. Votes: 0

There is only one child in the world and the Child’s name is All Children. Votes: 0

There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart, The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust. A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it. Votes: 0

A tree is best measured when it is down - and so it is with people. Votes: 0

Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters. Votes: 0

Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes. Today is here. If you don't know what to do, sit still and listen. You may hear something. Nobody knows. Votes: 0

Newspapers tell beforehand what is going to happen - maybe. Votes: 0

Poetry is a diary kept by a sea creature who lives on land and wishes he could fly. Votes: 0

Whenever a people or an institution forget its hard beginnings, it is beginning to decay. Votes: 0

Tell me if the lovers are losers... tell me if any get more than the lovers. Votes: 0

Time is a sandpile we run our fingers in. Votes: 0

Come on, you Do you want to live forever? Votes: 0

Always the path of American destiny has been into the unknown. Always there arose enough reserves of strength, balances of sanity, portions of wisdom to carry the nation through to a fresh start with ever-renewing vitality. Votes: 0

If I added to their pride of America, I am happy. Votes: 0

So I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Votes: 0

Be careful with your words, once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten. Votes: 0

Enough small empty boxes thrown into a big empty box fill it full. Votes: 0

When one has the right swing and enthusiasm, selling is not unlike hunting, a veritable sport. To scare up the game by preliminary talk and to know how long to follow it, to lose your gain through poorly directed argument, to hang on to game that finally eludes, to boldly confront, to quickly circle around, to keep on the trail, tireless and keen, till you have bagged some orders, there is some satisfaction in returning at night, tired of the trail, but proud of the days work done. Votes: 0

You know being born is important to you. You know nothing else was ever so important to you. Votes: 0

I glory in this world of men and women, torn with troubles, yet living on to love and laugh through it all. Votes: 0

Life goes before we know what it is. / One fool is enough in any house. / Even God gets tired of too much hallelujah. / Take it easy and live long as brothers. Votes: 0

There are 10 men in me and I do not know or understand one of them. Votes: 0

Rest is not a word of free people. Rest is a monarchical word. Votes: 0

The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody's time never watches the foreman never talks back. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Freedom is baffling: men having it often know not they have it till it is gone and they no longer have it. Votes: 0

What is there more of in the world than anything else? Ends. Votes: 0

Men of ideas vanish when freedom vanishes. Votes: 0

The people will live on.The learning and blundering people will live on. Votes: 0

The people know what the land knows. Votes: 0

The simple dignity of a child drinking a bowl of milk embodies the fascination of an ancient rite. Votes: 0

The sea is always the same: and yet the sea always changes. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

The more rhymethere isin poetry the more dangerof its tricking the writer into something other than the urge in the beginning. Votes: 0

Poetry is a slipknot tightened around a time-beat of one thought, two thoughts, and a last interweaving thought there is not yet a number for. Votes: 0

I am still studying verbs and the mystery of how they connect nouns. I am more suspicious of adjectives than at any other time in all my born days. Votes: 0

I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself. Votes: 0

Poetry is a dance music measuring buck-and-wing follies along with the gravest and stateliest dead-marches. Votes: 0

Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, 'Listen!' and 'Did you see it?' 'Did you hear it? What was it?' Votes: 0

Poetry is an art practiced with the terribly plastic material of human language. Votes: 0

Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths. Votes: 0

And those who say, "I'll try anything once," often try nothing twice, three times, arriving late at the gate of dreams worth dying for. Votes: 0

What of the Wright boys in Dayton? Just around the corner they had a shop and did a bicycle business-and they wanted to fly for the sake of flying. They were Man the Seeker, Man on a Quest. Money was their last thought, their final absent-minded idea. They threw out a lot of old mistaken measurements and figured new ones that stood up when they took off and held the air and steered a course. They proved that "the faster you go the less power you need." Votes: 0

If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell Votes: 0

Poetry is the harnessing of the paradox of earth cradling life and then entombing it. Votes: 0

Poetry is a tracing of the trajectories of a finite sound to the infinite points of its echoes. Votes: 0

Poetry is a sky dark with a wild-duck migration. Votes: 0

Poetry is an exhibit of one pendulum connecting with other and unseen pendulums inside and outside the one seen. Votes: 0

Poetry is a mock of a cry at finding a million dollars and a mock of a laugh at losing it. Votes: 0

Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water. Votes: 0

A tough will counts. So does desire.So does a rich soft wanting.Without rich wanting nothing arrives. Votes: 0

In democracy both a deep reverence and a sense of the comic are requisite. Votes: 0

Poetry is statement of a series of equations, with numbers and symbols changing like the changes of mirrors, pools, skies, the only never-changing sign being the sign of infinity. Votes: 0

I'll die propped up in bed trying to do a poem about America. Votes: 0

We live in the time of the colossal upright oblong. Votes: 0

An expert is a damn fool a long way from home. Votes: 0

Poetry is the capture of a picture, a song, or a flair, in a deliberate prism of words. Votes: 0

out of great Russia came three dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die for: Bread, Peace, Land. Votes: 0

The buffaloes are gone. And those who saw the buffaloes are gone. Votes: 0

Time is a great teacher, Who can live without hope? Votes: 0

POETRY: A sliver of the moon lost in the belly of a golden frog. Votes: 0

I been a wanderin' Early and late, New York City To the Golden Gate An' it looks like I'm never gonna cease my Wanderin'. Votes: 0

Poetry is a section of river-fog and moving boat-lights, delivered between bridges and whistles, so one says, 'Oh!' and another, 'How?' Votes: 0

History is a living horse laughing at a wooden horse. History is a wind blowing where it listeth. History is no sure thing to bet on. History is a box of tricks with a lost key. History is a labyrinth of doors with sliding panels, a book of ciphers with the code in a cave of the Saragossa sea. History says, if it pleases, Excuse me, I beg your pardon, it will never happen again if I can help it. Votes: 0

Money buys everything except love, personality, freedom, immortality, silence, peace. Votes: 0

Poetry is a kinetic arrangement of static syllables. Votes: 0

Poetry is the arithmetic of the easiest way and the primrose path, matched up with foam-flanked horses, bloody knuckles, and bones, on the hard ways to the stars. Votes: 0

I remember in my early 20s when I felt I couldn't live past 30. I was learning how to write. I had a lot of hard work ahead of me. Votes: 0

The impact of television on our culture is. . . indescribable. There's a certain sense in which it is nearly as important as the invention of printing. Votes: 0

I was up day and night with Lincoln for years. I couldn't have picked a better companion. Votes: 0

Poetry is a shuffling of boxes of illusions buckled with a strap of facts. Votes: 0

The woman named Tomorrow sits with a hairpin in her teeth and takes her time Votes: 0

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe. Votes: 0

I take you and pile high the memories. Death will break her claws on some I keep. Votes: 0

And even now she beats her head against the bars in the same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place the railroads run to from Chicago where maybe there is romance and big things and real dreams that never go smash. Votes: 0

God, let me remember all good losers. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Somebody's little girl- how easy it is to make a sob story over who she once was and who she now is. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Now I am here - now read me - give me a name. Votes: 0

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion. Votes: 0

There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted Votes: 0

There are men and women so lonely they believe God, too, is lonely. Votes: 0

After the sunset on the prairie, there are only the stars Votes: 0

Didn't you tie the mittens on her feet (Wednesday Evening's) extra special nice? Yes--she is an extra special nice pigeon. She cries for pity when she wants pity. And she shuts her eyes when she doesn't want to look at you. And if you look deep in her eyes when her eyes are open you will see lights there exactly like the lights on the pastures and the meadows when the mist is drifting on a Wednesday evening just between the twilight and gloaming. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man. Votes: 0

My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter. Votes: 0

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the women don't get you then the whiskey must. Votes: 0

And how should a beautiful, ignorant stream of water know it heads for an early release — out across the desert, running toward the Gulf, below sea level, to murmur its lullaby, and see the Imperial Valley rise out of burning sand with cotton blossoms, wheat, watermelons, roses, how should it know? Votes: 0

The drum in a dream pounds loud to the dreamer. Votes: 0

I am! I have come through! I belong! Votes: 0

To those who had ordered them to death one of them said: 'We die because the people are asleep... you will die because the people will awaken'. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Now is the time. It is never too late to start something. Votes: 0

All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel and after the five years, lacking a month, I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker. Votes: 0

It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down. And your eyes and the moon swept the valley. Votes: 0

Such a Big miracle in such a tiny baby. Big things often have small beginnings A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. Votes: 0

A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies. Votes: 0

Hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, yonder. Votes: 0

Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations. Votes: 0

The marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading "Keep Off. Votes: 0

The shovel is the brother to the gun. Votes: 0

The impact of television on our culture is just indescribable. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work. I am the grass. I cover all. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts. Votes: 0

Time says hush: by the gong of time you live. Listen and you hear time saying you were silent long before you came to life and you will again be silent long after you leave it, why not be a little silent now? Hush yourself, noisy little man. Time hushes all: the gong of time rang for you to come out of the hush and you were born. The gong of time will ring for you to go back to the same hush you came from. Winners and losers, the weak and the strong, those who say little and try to say it well, and those who babble and prattle their lives away, time hushes all. Votes: 0

What else have I done nearly all my life than go hungry and go on singing? Votes: 0

There is a warning love sends and the cost of it is never written till long afterward. Votes: 0

I remember the Chillicothe ballplayers grappling the Long Island ball players in a sixteen-inning game ended by darkness. And the shoulders of the Chillicothe players were a red smoke against the sundown and the shoulders of the Rock Island players were a yellow smoke against the sundown. And the umpire's voice was hoarse calling balls and strikes and outs and the umpire's throat fought in the dust for a song. Votes: 0

All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write. Votes: 0

Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands, come off the whisper of the silk hangers, the lap of the flat spear leaves. Votes: 0

Faith is indispensable, and the world at times does not seem to have quite enough of it. It can and has accomplished what seems to be the impossible. Wars have been started and men and nations lost for the lack of it. Faith starts from the individual and builds men and nations. America was built by and on the faith of our ancestors. Votes: 0

The dead hold in their hands only what they have given away. Votes: 0

There is no song to your singing. Votes: 0

What if someone gave a war & Nobody came? / Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be Itself again. Votes: 0

I am an idealist. I believe in everything — I am only looking for proofs. Votes: 0

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect. Votes: 0

There is only one man in the world and his name is All Men. There is only one woman in the world and her name is All Women. There is only one child in the world and the child's name is All Children. Votes: 0

To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damned hard. Votes: 0

A liar goes in fine clothes, a liar goes in rags, a liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes. Votes: 0

Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going? Votes: 0