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.
— Carl Sandburg
There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.
To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard.
The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.
We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born.
There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it.
The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help.
I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.
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.
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.
I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.
I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out.
I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.
Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven't told the girl you are smitten with her.
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.
Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.
Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.
Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny.
Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.
We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.
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.
Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool-and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool.
I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.
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.
I have often wondered what it is an old building can do to you when you happen to know a little about things that went on long ago in that building.
I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.
I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.
I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago.
Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.
I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.
All politicians should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected.
Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.
Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
You remember some bedrooms you have slept in. There are bedrooms you like to remember and others you would like to forget.
We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.
To be a good loser is to learn how to win.
There are 10 men in me and I do not know or understand one of them.
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.
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.
I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends.
I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way.
I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter.
I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.
Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life.
A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.
Nothing happens unless first we dream.
