Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
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.
One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
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.
I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.
To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard.
I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder.
I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends.
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.
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.
Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
