425 Quotes by Carl Sandburg

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.

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one.

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

Tell no man anything, for no man listensYet hold thy lips ready to speak.

Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today.Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction.See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.

These wheels within wheelsThese leaves folded in leavesThese wheeling windsand winding leavesThose sprocketsfrom those seedsThis spiral shootingfrom that rainfall-What does a turning earthsay to its axis?How should a melon say thanksOr a squash utter blessings?

I told her I felt kind of restless about the new poetry and I had high hopes the new poetry one way or another would be able to get at the real stuff of American life, slipping its fingers into the steel meshes and copper coils of it under the streets and over the houses and people and factories and groceries, conceding a fair batting average to Dante and Keats for what they wrote about love and roses and the moon.

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.

Beware of advice—even this.