"To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard."

Death

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Insight & Reflection

This reflection on death by Carl Sandburg resonates across generations. It highlights a fundamental truth about human nature: our continuous search for meaning in death is what ultimately defines our character and our path forward.

About Carl Sandburg

Carl August Sandburg was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature", especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life". When he died in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America."

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Editorial Note: This quote is curated and fact-checked by the Quotes Archive Editorial Team. Verified Literature Specialist.

More by Carl Sandburg

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

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