“All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.”

“I speak of new cities and new peopleI tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,a sun dropped in the west.I tell you there is nothing in the worldonly an ocean of tomorrows.a sky of tomorrows.I am a brother of the cornhuskers who sayat sundown:Tomorrow is a day.”- Carl Sandburg, Cornhuskers”

“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.”

“When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.”

“We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.”

“I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.”

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

“Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.”

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

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

“Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.”