Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.
There are dreams stronger than death. Men and women die holding these dreams.
Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
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.
We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born.
I won’t take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.
Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.
It is the business of little minds to shrink.
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.
To be a good loser is to learn how to win.
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.
Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.
Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed.
There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.
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.
Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.
I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.
Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.
Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.