Carl Sandburg

"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."

"I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth."

"I've written some poetry I don't understand myself."

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

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

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

"Nothing happens unless first we dream."

"Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away."

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance."

"Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment."

"Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."

"The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to."

"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."

"We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough."

"When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along."

"When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on."