In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.
Carl Sandburg
- More quotations on Society
Carl Sandburg quotes
And how should a beautiful, ignorant stream of water know it heads for an early release - out across the desert, running toward the Gulf, below sea level, to murmur its lullaby, and see the Imperial Valley rise out of burning sand with cotton blossoms, wheat, watermelons, roses, how should it know?
Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.
Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.
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.
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.
A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.
All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.
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.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.
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.
I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.
I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.
I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.
I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.
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.
I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.
I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
If America 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.
Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.
Nothing happens unless first we dream.
One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.
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.
Similiar authors
Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Howard Nemerov
Elizabeth Bishop
Sarah Knowles Bolton
James Dickey
William Drummond
John Erskine
Edward Fitzgerald
Vance Palmer
Ryunosuke Satoro