Carl Sandburg

I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

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.

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

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

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

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

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

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.

The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.

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

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

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

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

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

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

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 an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

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

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