"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."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
Carl Sandburg quotes (page 11 of 14)
264 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"out of great Russia came three dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die for: Bread, Peace, Land."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"You know being born is important to you. You know nothing else was ever so important to you."
Read quote
3 likes
"Time is a sandpile we run our fingers in."
Read quote
3 likes
"Poetry is an enumeration of birds, bees, babies, butterflies, bugs, bambinos, babayagas, and bipeds, beating their way up bewildering bastions."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"Poetry is a fossil rock-print of a fin and a wing, with an illegible oath between."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"Poetry is a tracing of the trajectories of a finite sound to the infinite points of its echoes."
Read quote
3 likes
"A tough will counts. So does desire.So does a rich soft wanting.Without rich wanting nothing arrives."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"Poetry is a section of river-fog and moving boat-lights, delivered between bridges and whistles, so one says, 'Oh!' and another, 'How?'"
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"The peace of great books be for you, Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages, Bleach of the light of years held in leather."
Read quote
3 likes
"The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help."
Read quote
3 likes