Quote

For we know when a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found. They forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along.

Carl Sandburg

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Carl Sandburg
Age: 89 †
Born: 1878
Born: January 6
Died: 1967
Died: July 22
Biographer
Historian
Journalist
Musicologist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Trade Unionist
Writer
Galesburg
Illinois
Carl August Sandburg
May
Conditions
Perishes
Back
Goes
Forgot
Always
Came
Condition
Never
Nations
Brought
Society
Sight
Comes
Civilization
Lost
Along
Found
Nation

More quotes by Carl Sandburg

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The people know what the land knows.
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God, let me remember all good losers.
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Freedom is baffling: men having it often know not they have it till it is gone and they no longer have it.
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I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty.
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Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.
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Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers.
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Poetry is a fresh morning spider-web telling a story of moonlit hours of weaving and waiting during a night.
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There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it.
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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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Be careful with your words, once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten.
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Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.
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Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, 'Listen!' and 'Did you see it?' 'Did you hear it? What was it?'
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The dead hold in their hands only what they have given away.
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There is no song to your singing.
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It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?'...If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time-the stuff of life
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A tough will counts. So does desire.So does a rich soft wanting.Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
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Poetry is the capture of a picture, a song, or a flair, in a deliberate prism of words.
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A tree is best measured when it is down - and so it is with people.
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Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes. Today is here. If you don't know what to do, sit still and listen. You may hear something. Nobody knows.
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Our lives are like a candle in the wind.
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