Carl Sandburg

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

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.

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

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.

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

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.

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.

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

The greatest cunning is to have none at all.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.

For we know when a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found. They forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along.

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.

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

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.

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