Carl Sandburg

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.

Nothing happens... but first a dream.

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

I could safely declare, I am an idealist... I believe in everything - I am only looking for proofs.

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

The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over the harbor_x000D_ _x000D_ and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

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.

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

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.

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.