Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Carl Sandburg Novelist

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Jan 6, 1878
  • Died: Jul 22, 1967

Carl August Sandburg was an American poet, writer and editor best known for poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat".

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

All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.

To be a good loser is to learn how to win.

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

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

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

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.

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

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

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

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

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

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

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

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