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.
Carl SandburgRead
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The sea expresses itself in a raw and unfiltered way that civilized society often ignores or disrespects.
Carl Sandburg's quote reflects on the sea as a symbol of nature's untamed power and the way it communicates in a language that contrasts with human civility. The sea's voice is described as a 'colossal scavenger slang,' suggesting that it reveals truths and realities that polite society chooses to overlook or sanitize, emphasizing a disconnect between human sensibilities and the brutal honesty of the natural world.
Themes
SeaNatureCommunicationPowerHonesty
In practice
Example use cases
During a beach cleanup event, this quote can be shared to highlight the rawness of nature.
More from Carl Sandburg
All quotes βNothing happens... but first a dream.
Carl SandburgRead
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.
Carl SandburgRead
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Carl SandburgRead
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 SandburgRead
A liar goes in fine clothes, a liar goes in rags, a liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
Carl SandburgRead
Similar quotes
Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.
H. P. LovecraftRead
The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.
Virginia WoolfRead
[About reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, age 14, in the back seat of his parents' sedan. I almost threw up. I got physically ill when I learned that ospreys and peregrine falcons weren't raising chicks because of what people were spraying on bugs at their farms and lawns. This was the first time I learned that humans could impact the environment with chemicals. [That a corporation would create a product that didn't operate as advertised] was shocking in a way we weren't inured to.
Carl SafinaRead
A pilot's business is with the wind, and with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares with expectancy for the coming of the dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.
Antoine De Saint-ExuperyRead
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Wendell BerryRead
Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.
Martin ReesRead