Walt Whitman famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
-- Walt Whitman -
Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.
-- Walt Whitman -
Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.
-- Walt Whitman -
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
-- Walt Whitman -
Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.
-- Walt Whitman -
Be not ashamed women, ... You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.
-- Walt Whitman -
Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.
-- Walt Whitman -
Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between people, and their beliefs - in religion, literature, colleges and schools- democracy in all public and private life...
-- Walt Whitman -
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines.
-- Walt Whitman -
Either define the moment or the moment will define you.
-- Walt Whitman -
Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless-each of us with his or her right upon the earth.
-- Walt Whitman -
The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
-- Walt Whitman -
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find."
-- Walt Whitman -
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
-- Walt Whitman -
Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams, Now I wash the gum from your eyes, You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life
-- Walt Whitman -
All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any, (What is less or more than a touch)...
-- Walt Whitman -
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
-- Walt Whitman -
O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done.
-- Walt Whitman -
Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning - I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover? Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction? Do you think I am trusty and faithful? Do you see no further than this façade—this smooth and tolerant manner of me? Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man? Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?
-- Walt Whitman -
I know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I laugh at what you call dissolution, and I know the amplitude of time.
-- Walt Whitman -
There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man's bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die.
-- Walt Whitman -
O captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done. The ship has weather'd every wrack The prize we sought is won The port is near, the bells I hear The people all exulting While follow eyes, the steady keel The vessel grim and daring But Heart! Heart! Heart! O the bleeding drops of red Where on the deck my captain lies Fallen cold and dead.
-- Walt Whitman -
I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.
-- Walt Whitman -
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
-- Walt Whitman -
Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.
-- Walt Whitman -
The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
-- Walt Whitman -
To drive free, to love free, to court destruction with taunts, to feed the remainder of life with one hour of fullness and freedom - one brief hour of madness and joy.
-- Walt Whitman -
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!
-- Walt Whitman -
Day by day and night by night we were together - all else has long been forgotten by me.
-- Walt Whitman -
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.
-- Walt Whitman -
The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.
-- Walt Whitman -
Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.
-- Walt Whitman -
Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
-- Walt Whitman -
The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.
-- Walt Whitman -
Long have you timidly waded Holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, Rise again, nod to me, shout, And laughingly dash with your hair.
-- Walt Whitman -
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
-- Walt Whitman -
Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.
-- Walt Whitman -
All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.
-- Walt Whitman -
I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election.
-- Walt Whitman -
A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls.
-- Walt Whitman -
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.
-- Walt Whitman -
I am an acme of things accomplished, and I am an encloser of things to be.
-- Walt Whitman -
Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others... And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
-- Walt Whitman -
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, with many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle - and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I break.
-- Walt Whitman -
Wisdom is not finally tested by the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.
-- Walt Whitman -
I refuse putting from me the best that I am.
-- Walt Whitman -
Every hour of every day is an unspeakably perfect miracle.
-- Walt Whitman -
The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.
-- Walt Whitman -
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems
-- Walt Whitman -
Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.
-- Walt Whitman -
Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.
-- Walt Whitman -
Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.
-- Walt Whitman -
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
-- Walt Whitman -
I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.
-- Walt Whitman -
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation: The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer, I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.
-- Walt Whitman -
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him - it cannot fail
-- Walt Whitman -
With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.
-- Walt Whitman -
Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.
-- Walt Whitman -
The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
-- Walt Whitman -
The truth is simple. If it was complicated, everyone would understand it.
-- Walt Whitman -
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
-- Walt Whitman -
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
-- Walt Whitman -
Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.
-- Walt Whitman -
If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred.
-- Walt Whitman -
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
-- Walt Whitman -
I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.
-- Walt Whitman -
A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.
-- Walt Whitman -
NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.
-- Walt Whitman -
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
-- Walt Whitman -
The future is no more uncertain than the present.
-- Walt Whitman -
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
-- Walt Whitman -
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, Strong and content I travel the open road.
-- Walt Whitman -
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.
-- Walt Whitman -
Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?
-- Walt Whitman -
There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.
-- Walt Whitman -
The best writing has no lace on its sleeves.
-- Walt Whitman -
I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
-- Walt Whitman -
Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
-- Walt Whitman
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