Poems
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Docks
by Carl Sandburg
Strolling along
By the teeming docks,
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Fog
by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
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Pennsylvania
by Carl Sandburg
I have been in Pennsylvania,
In the Monongahela and Hocking Valleys.
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
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Nothing happens unless first we dream.
– Carl Sandburg
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Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
– Carl Sandburg
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The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
– Carl Sandburg
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A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
– Carl Sandburg
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The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.
– Carl Sandburg
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To be a good loser is to learn how to win.
– Carl Sandburg
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Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
– Carl Sandburg
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Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
– Carl Sandburg
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Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.
– Carl Sandburg
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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
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I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.
– Carl Sandburg
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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
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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
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Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
– Carl Sandburg
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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
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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.
– Carl Sandburg
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Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence.
– Carl Sandburg
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Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
– Carl Sandburg
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Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
– Carl Sandburg
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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
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I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.
– Carl Sandburg
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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
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I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
– Carl Sandburg
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In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.
– Carl Sandburg
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The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
– Carl Sandburg
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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.
– Carl Sandburg
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I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.
– Carl Sandburg
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One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
– Carl Sandburg
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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
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Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.
– Carl Sandburg
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I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends.
– Carl Sandburg
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There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it.
– Carl Sandburg
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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
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I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.
– Carl Sandburg
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A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.
– Carl Sandburg
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Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.
– Carl Sandburg
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Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven't told the girl you are smitten with her.
– Carl Sandburg
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I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.
– Carl Sandburg
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There are 10 men in me and I do not know or understand one of them.
– Carl Sandburg
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We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.
– Carl Sandburg
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Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.
– Carl Sandburg
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Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.
– Carl Sandburg
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