Vachel Lindsay Quotations

You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them.

I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.

To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name.

This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: -- / To speak of bloody power as right divine,/ And call on God to guard each vile chief's house,/ And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine.

Fools-to-free-the-world, they go, Primeval hearts from Buffalo. Red cataracts of France to-day Awake, three thousand miles away, An echo of Niagara The cataract of Niagara.

Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black,Cutting through the forest with a golden track.

The sun is a huntress young, The sun is a red, red joy, The sun is an Indian girl, Of the tribe of the Illinois. The sun is a smouldering fire, That creeps through the high gray plain, And leaves not a bush of cloud To blossom with flowers of rain. The sun is a wounded deer, That treads pale grass in the skies, Shaking his golden horns, Flashing his baleful eyes. The sun is an eagle old, There in the windless west. Atop of the spirit-cliffs He builds him a crimson nest.

My life is unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life is unkind, but I can vote for kindness.

Let not young souls be smothered out Before they do quaint deeds And fully flaunt their pride.

They tried to get me-I got them first! (suicide note)

I think on death as the apparent end of the illusions that encompass us. They all have a sudden and unexpected end, that challenges any faith we have pinned to their worth.

Except the Christ be born again tonight In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame, The world will never see his kingdom bright.

Oh, I have walked in Kansas Through many a harvest field, And piled the sheaves of glory there And down the wild rows reeled: Each sheaf a little yellow sun, A heap of hot-rayed gold; Each binder like Creation's hand To mold suns, as of old.

This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: - To speak of bloody power as right divine, And call on God to guard each vile chief's house, And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine.

God lead us past the setting of the sun To wizard islands, of august surprise; God make our blunders wise.

Factory windows are always brokenOther windows are let alone.No one throws through the chapel-windowThe bitter, snarling, derisive stone.

Authors and uncaptured criminals are the only people free from routine.

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo . . . Jumbo . . . will . . . hoo-doo . . . you.

Life is a loom, weaving illusion.

The crooning turns to a sunrise singing.

How can we help students to understand that the tragedy of life is not death; the tragedy is to die with commitments undefined and convictions undeclared and service unfulfilled?

The only thing that a man may do that is new, is to write himself on human hearts.

Change the fabric of your own soul and your own visions, and you change all.

Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil.