Quotes from Carl Sandburg

Speak to the branches of spring and the surprise of blossoms: they too hope for a good year.

The blood of roses, splashed with the blood of angels, and of demons.

like a book read over and over again like one book being a long row of books like leaves and windflowers bending low and bending to be never broken

Thumbs understand the fingers better than the fingers understand the thumb. Sometimes the fingers feel sorry the thumb is not a finger. The thumb is needed more often than any of the fingers. Look close at any thumb and you see it is not proud. Each finger has two knuckles, a thumb only one knuckle, and they need each other.

These wheels within wheels These leaves folded in leaves These wheeling winds and winding leaves Those sprockets from those seeds This spiral shooting from that rainfall- What does a turning earth say to its axis? How should a melon say thanks Or a squash utter blessings?

The one-eyed mollusc on the sea-bottom, feathered and luminous, is my equal in what he and I know of star clusters not yet found by the best of star-gazers.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

It is the hand of God and the lack of fire escapes

The Fist Kiss Came With Flame The first kiss came with flame She gave him a flame wine From her scarlet lips a flame wine The second kiss came with a sea-wish She became the sea to him The pride and anger of the sea she gave him Three times they had kissed A third time deep in her winding sea-velvet She moved in light-shifts of bright sea-velvet for him Again she came with a long kiss of stars She beckoned him to a tall dome of stars

I believe in humility...Also, I believe in pride, knowing well that the deadliest of the seven deadly sins is named as pride. I believe in a pride that prays ever for an awareness of that borderline where, unless watchful of yourself, you cross over into arrogance, into vanity, into mirror gazing, into misuse and violation of the sacred portions of your personality.

Find for your pencils A way to mark your memory

I say good-by when I see you going in the doors, The hopeless open doors that call and wait And take you then for- how many cents a day? How many cents for the sleepy eyes and fingers? I say good-by because I know they tap your wrists, In the dark, in the silence, day by day, And all the blood of you drop by drop, And you are old before you are young.

Dust of the feet And dust of the wheels, Wagons and people going, All day feet and wheels. Now... ...Only stars and mist

Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.

Passers-by, Out of your many faces Flash memories to me Now at the day end Away from the sidewalks Where your shoe soles traveled And your voices rose and blent To form the city's afternoon roar Hindering an old silence.

The worn wayfaring men With the hunched and humble shoulders, Throw their laughter into toil.

I say now, by God, only fighters today will save the world

The keepers of wisdom testify a heap of ashes means whatever was there went out burning.

Presents are delivered from the sky, in every package a prize, a chance, to choke, to suffocate, to forget, yes to forget every last word ever spoken of man higher in the scale than animal creation, the gorilla and the tiger being mere beasts while man has shrines, altars, lights, books awarding him personal immortality, books not yet banned nor burned.

He had no mother but Mother Jones Crying from a jail window of Trinidad: "All I want is room enough to stand And shake my fist at the enemies of the human race.

He had ten hopes to your one.

If the Lord should come He'd change you to nothing for there's nothing to you.

Better the blue silence and the gray west, The autumn mist on the river, And not any hate and not any love, And not anything at all of the keen and the deep: Only the peace of a dog head on a barn floor, And the new corn shoveled in bushels And the pumpkins brought from the corn rows, Umber lights of the dark, Umber lanterns of the loam dark. Here a dog head dreams. Not any hate, not any love. Not anything but dreams. Brother of dusk and umber.

I'd live in the fields on hard corn for a just cause. Yes, for a just cause I'd live in the fields On hard corn.