Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence.
Carl Sandburg

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.
Carl Sandburg

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

Nothing happens unless first we dream.
Carl Sandburg

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.
Carl Sandburg

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
Carl Sandburg

Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.
Carl Sandburg

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

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
Carl Sandburg

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.
Carl Sandburg

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

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
Carl Sandburg

Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.
Carl Sandburg

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

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

Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny.
Carl Sandburg

The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
Carl Sandburg

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
Carl Sandburg

The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help.
Carl Sandburg

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