Quotes by Carl Sandburg
Every Thanksgiving and Christmas sason for four years I dressed chickens and turkeys in the basement of Sam Swanson's meat market, five cents for getting the feathers off a chicken, ten cents for a turkey.
I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.
A fellow, after speaking, took his seat as though he had had a good workout and felt easier.
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.
You could mail a copy of Incidentals in an ordinary letter envelope, it was that small a book.
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.
I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.
The United States was at peace with the world. The country felt good about it. Little wars sprang up here and there in Europe, Asia, Africa, but it was none of our business.
The United States census for 1860 counted more than 600,000 Universalists in the country.
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.
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie.
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.
Every couple that kept going steady over the four years I was at college were later reported as married.
I was a call man for the fire department. My job most often was to connect with a hydrant and with a wrench turn on the water.
The manager of a small vaudeville theater said he would give me a tryout. I went on a second night. I stayed shy of show business. I was fuzzy-minded about it.
The girl rated as decent kept away from the powder and rouge. In public a girl's ankle and sometimes calf could be seen only when she was in a gym or swim suit.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.
We were very near to being Middle Class though the Old Man was still a blacksmith's helper.
Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven't told the girl you are smitten with her.
My black-bordered editorial on the death of President McKinley had a few good sentences but was stilted and perfunctory.
I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.
If anthropology is the science dealing with man as an animal, at those meetings you could hear man as the animal who can spill and spout language.
At football I had my try-outs and found that after being slammed to the ground a few times I had no interest in my studies.
