Carl Sandburg citations

Page 2

“By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul.”

“In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning”

“Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline. The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets, one waits.”

“And even now she beats her head against the bars in the same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place the railroads run to from Chicago where maybe there is
romance
and big things
and real dreams
that never go smash.”

“Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-haired child.”

“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.”

“There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted.”

“We can never possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.”

“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.”

“After the sunset on the prairie, there are only the stars”

“Tell no man anything, for no man listens
Yet hold thy lips ready to speak.”

“The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over the harbor and city
on silent haunches, and then moves on.”

“I want the respect of intelligent men but I will choose for myself the intelligent. I love art but I decide for myself what is art. I adore beauty but only my own soul shall tell me what is beauty. I worship God but I define and describe God for myself. I am an individual. The pleasure of my own heart shall be first to inform me when I have done good work.”

“The little girl saw her first troop parade and asked,
"What are those?"
"Soldiers."
"What are soldiers?"
"They are for war. They fight and each tries to kill as many of the other side as he can."
The girl held still and studied.
"Do you know … I know something?"
"Yes, what is it you know?"”

“Tell me if the lovers are losers… tell me if any get more than the lovers.”

“Man's life? A candle in the wind, hoar-frost on stone.”

“If she forgets where she came from, if the people lose sight of what brought them along, if she listens to the deniers and mockers, then will begin the rot and dissolution.”

“Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.”

“The greatest cunning is to have none at all.”

“Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos,
sob on the long cool winding saxophones.
Go to it, O jazzmen.”

“The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?”

“Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders.”

“When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into
the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and
the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs.”

“The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.”

“I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.”

“I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision …”

“The name of an iron man goes round the world.
It takes a long time to forget an iron man.”

“One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.”

“The United States is, not are.”