Walt Whitman Quotes

"A great city is that which has the greatest men and women."

"A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."

"After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains."

"All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor."

"And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero."

"And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud."

"Baseball will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us."

"Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself."

"Camerado, I give you my hand, I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself?"

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."

"Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?"

"Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed."

"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."

"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?"

"He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher."

"Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune."

"Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely."

"How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!"

"I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best."

"I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers."

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars."

"I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep."

"I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease... observing a spear of summer grass."

"I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious."

"I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones."

"I have learned that to be with those I like is enough."

"I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes - but is that all?"

"I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends."

"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences."

"I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least."

"I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game."

"If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred."

"Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy."

"Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed."

"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."

"O lands! O all so dear to me - what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is."

"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."

"O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent."

"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."

"Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people."

"Press close bare-bosomed night - press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds! night of the large few stars! Still nodding night! mad naked summer night."

"Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul."

"Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle."

"Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?"

"The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity."

"The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves."

"The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul."

"The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."

"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."

"The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world."

"The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws."

"The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem."

"The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual."

"The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything."

"There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe."

"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."

"There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius."

"This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat."

"To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

"To have great poets, there must be great audiences too."

"To have great poets, there must be great audiences."

"To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle."

"To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle."

"To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all."

"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."

"What a devil art thou, Poverty! How many desires - how many aspirations after goodness and truth - how many noble thoughts, loving wishes toward our fellows, beautiful imaginings thou hast crushed under thy heel, without remorse or pause!"

"Wisdom is not finally tested in 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."

"You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things."

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