Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all.
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The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
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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.
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Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
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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.
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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.
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A baby is God's opinion that life should go on
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History is a living horse laughing at a wooden horse. History is a wind blowing where it listeth. History is no sure thing to bet on. History is a box of tricks with a lost key. History is a labyrinth of doors with sliding panels, a book of ciphers with the code in a cave of the Saragossa sea. History says, if it pleases, Excuse me, I beg your pardon, it will never happen again if I can help it.
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Nothing happens unless first a dream.
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Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
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The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
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There have been as many varieties of socialists as there are wild birds that fly in the woods and sometimes go up and on through the clouds.
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A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
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In reply to the question, What was it the last man on earth said Where is everybody
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Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper until you get the right answer.
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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.
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To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard.
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I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.
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There are dreams stronger than death. Men and women die holding these dreams.
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Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.
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Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
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Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes.
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The people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on.
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Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
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The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
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I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.
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I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
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One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
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I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.
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The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by newspapers and the Bible.
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