Life & Wisdom Quote by Carl Sandburg

Sandburg sneaks a whole weather system of feeling into a plainspoken sentence. “Calling it off” sounds like a casual administrative act, something you can do with a phone call or a shrug. Then he tilts the line: it’s only “easy enough” if you’ve kept your mouth shut about being “smitten.” The real subject isn’t the canceled plan; it’s the hidden cost of confession.

The word choice matters. “Smitten” is old-fashioned, almost boyish, a little self-mocking. It frames romantic intensity as something that happens to you, not something you control. That lets Sandburg dodge melodrama while still admitting vulnerability. The “girl” is telling, too: not “woman,” not “partner.” It carries the era’s gendered simplicity and a faint paternalism, but it also signals the speaker’s emotional posture - a person reduced to adolescent nerves when desire is on the line.

Subtext: the hardest thing about backing out isn’t logistics; it’s the social and moral debt created the moment you name your feeling. Once you’ve declared yourself, you’ve handed the other person power over the story. Canceling now isn’t just changing plans; it’s retracting a piece of your identity, risking humiliation, appearing fickle, or exposing that the devotion was less durable than the performance.

Sandburg, a poet of American directness, often elevated everyday speech into emotional truth. This line fits that project: working-class diction, no ornament, but a precise understanding of how intimacy traps us in commitments we didn’t realize we were making until we tried to leave.