Quotes from Carl Sandburg

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work. I am the grass. I cover all.

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.

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.

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.

I stayed away from mathematics not so much because I knew it would be hard work as because of the amount of time I knew it would take, hours spent in a field where I was not a natural.

I am the people the mob the crowd the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

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

I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself.

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

To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard.

My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall.

Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure if 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.

Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers.

To those who had ordered them to death, one of them said: "We die because the people are asleep and you will die because the people will awaken."

A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.

I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends.

The simple dignity of a child drinking a bowl of milk embodies the fascination of an ancient rite.

All we need to begin with is a # dream that we can do better than before. All we need to have is faith, and that dream will come true. All we need to do is act, and the time for action is now.

It is necessary...for a man to go away by himself...to sit on a rock...and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?'

Life is like an onion; you peel one layer off at a time and sometimes you weep.

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.

Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep

In democracy both a deep reverence and a sense of the comic are requisite.