Vachel Lindsay Quotes

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

Not that they starve; but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

Life is a loom, weaving illusion.

The crooning turns to a sunrise singing.

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

We left you there, lonely,
Beauty your power,
Wisdom your watchman,
To hold the clay tower.
from 'The Tale of the Tiger Tree

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.

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

Factory windows are always broken
Other windows are let alone.
No one throws through the chapel-window
The bitter, snarling, derisive stone.

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

In a whirlwind world, independent languor becomes a virtue, and meditation engenders a finer art than any nervousness

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.

They tried to get me - I got them first!

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

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.

We let our ship blow and drift as it will. But it sweeps up and up, with the swiftness of light. In less time than it takes a flower to open, we are carried to the parapets of ancient Heaven. We find our great-leaved, heavy-fruited Amaranth Vine, climbing up over the closed gates and high wall-towers of Heaven and winding a long way into the old forest that has overgrown the streets. We find the new all conquering Springfield vine, spreading branches through the forest like a banyan tree.

As this Amaranth from our little earthly village grows thicker, we see by its light a bit pf what the ancient Heaven has been. And it is still a solid place of soil and rock and metal. Where the Springfield Amaranth blooms thickest, shedding luminous glory from the petals in the starlight, this Heaven is shown to be an autumn forest, yet with the cedars of Lebanon, and sandalwood thickets, and the million tropic trees whose seeds have blown here from strange zones of the'planets, and whose patterns are not the patterns of those of our world. Among these, vineclad pillars and walls are still standing, roofed palaces, so gigantic that, when our boat glides down the great streets between them, they overhang our masts.

And from branches above us these strange manners of fruits tumble upon our decks for our feasting and delight. And there are beneath our ship, as it sails on as it will, little fields long cleared in the forest, where grows weedy ungathered grain.