Quotes by Walt Whitman

We were together. I forget the rest.

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

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

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

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

Those who love each other shall become invincible.

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

Freedom -- to walk free and own no superior.

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.

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

Resist much, obey little.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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

Happiness, not in another place but this place, not for another hour, but this hour.

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

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt, Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee, In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game, Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves with my dog and gun by my side.

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

Women sit or move to and fro, some are old, some young. The young are beautiful -- but the old are more beautiful than the young.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine, and shadows will fall behind you.

Women sit, or move to and fro -- some old, some young; The young are beautiful -- but the old are more beautiful than the young.

To you, clerk, literary man, sedentary person, man of fortune, idler ... Up! The world (perhaps you now look upon it with pallid and disgusted eyes) is full of zest and beauty for you, if you approach it in the right spirit!

City of orgies, walks and joys! City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make you illustrious,.

With perfect health, there are no low spirits and cannot be.

O from his masterful sweep, the warning cry of the eagle!

The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments;
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels ... I myself become the wounded person,
My hurt turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!

Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing, I tread day and night such roads.

And these things I see suddenly, what mean they?
As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal'd my eyes,
Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,
And on the distant waves sail countless ships,
And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.

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.

Many a good man I have seen go under.

O the joy of my spirit -- it is uncaged -- it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.

Whoever degrades another degrades me.

Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death.

We consider bibles and religions divine I do not say they are not divine. I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still. It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life.

I know perfectly well my own egotism,
And know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

AS I watch'd the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.).

Thought Of equality- as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself- as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.

I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.

Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents, Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising, See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.

Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless-each of us with his or her right upon the earth.

The known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet.

What beauty there is in words; what a lurking curious charm in the sound some words.

A word of the faith that never balks,

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

It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all,

That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.

I act as the tongue of you,
... tied in your mouth ... in mine it begins to be loosened.

The chief trait of any given poet is always the spirit he brings to the observation of Humanity and Nature--the mood out of which he contemplates his subjects.

I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth. I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.

And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me,
I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,
I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish'd breasts of melons.

My little notebooks were beginnings -- they were the ground into which I dropped the seed... I would work in this way when I was out in the crowds, then put the stuff together at home.

If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.

O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you; As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.

The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first; Be not discouraged -- keep on -- there are divine things, well envelop'd; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete,

The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate with the theory of the earth.

I am given up by traitors;
I talk wildly ... I have lost my wits ... I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,
I went myself first to the headland ... my own hands carried me there.

I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.

For America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without;.

Come I should like to hear you tell me what there is in yourself that is not just as wonderful,
And I should like to hear the name of anything between Sunday morning and Saturday night that is not just as wonderful.

Perhaps the efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages, have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come, essentially the same -- to bring people back from their present strayings and sickly abstractions, to the costless, average, divine, original concrete.

Strangle the singers who will not sing you loud and strong.

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

Camden was originally an accident, but I shall never be sorry I was left over in Camden. It has brought me blessed returns.

Now, dearest comrade, lift me to your face,
We must separate awhile
Here! take from my lips this kiss.
Whoever you are, I give it especially to you;
So long! And I hope we shall meet again.

Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep for the dead I loved so well.

I do not seek good fortune -- I am good fortune!

People who serve you without love get even behind your back.

So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road.

The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.

Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity.

A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity; but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman.

I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country -- I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn.

A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls.

All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

The new rule shall rule as the soul rules, and as the love and justice and equality that are in the soul rule.

Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!
Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head and slumbers
and dreams and gaping,
I discover myself on the verge of the usual mistake.

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries.

Unscrew the locks from the doors ! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs !

I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.

There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became.

Comerado, this is no book,Who touches this, touches a man,(Is it night? Are we here alone?)It is I you hold, and who holds you,I spring from the pages into your arms-decease calls me forth.

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love.

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost.

Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her that it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

O amazement of things-even the least particle!

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.

Clear and sweet is my soul, clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots.

I know I am deathless We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.

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.

I am satisfied ... I see, dance, laugh, sing.

Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?

Loafe with me on the grass--loose the stop from your throat; Not words, not music or rhyme I want--not custom or lecture, not even the best; Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here--that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

The moon gives you light, and the bugles and the drums give you music, and my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, my heart gives you love.

All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments. It is not the violins and the cornets-it is not the oboe nor the beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza-nor that of the women's chorus; it is nearer and farther than they.

Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, Be not afraid of my body.

I was in the midst of it all -- saw war where war is worst -- not on the battlefields, no -- in the hospitals ... there I mixed with it: and now I say God damn the wars -- allw ars: God damn every war: God damn 'em! God damn 'em!

Most works are most beautiful without ornament.

O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

When one reaches out to help another he touches the face of God.

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

What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me, Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill, Scattering if freely forever.

There is no God any more divine than Yourself.

I keep thinking about you every few minutes all day.

The sum of all known value and respect, I add up in you, whoever you are.

Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are, Buds to be unfolded on the old terms; If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color, perfume, to you; If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall blanches and trees.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

What stays with you longest and deepest? Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean.

The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less,
it comes or it lags behind,
It comes from its embowered garden
and looks pleasantly on itself and encloses the world.

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

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

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding; And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.

Forsake all inhibitions, Pursue thy dreams.

Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.

Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge and of the investigation of the depths of qualities and things.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again and ever again, this soiled world.

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.

This is the city, and I am one of the citizens Whatever interests the rest interests me.

All is procession; the universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion.

For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!

The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blur with the manuscript.

Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.

To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachable of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art.

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.

I Think it is lost.....but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost . The body sluggish, aged, cold, the ember left from earlier fires shall duly flame again.

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

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?

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won.

The past, the future, majesty, love -- if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

The female that loves unrequited sleeps,
And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,
The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,
And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all sleep.

I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed; I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.

Expression of speech .. in what is written or said forget not that silence is also expressive,
That anguish as hot as the hottest and contempt as cold as the coldest may be without words,
That the true adoration is likewise without words and without kneeling.

I depart as air .... I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is,.

At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really knows or feels what Poetry is at its highest, as in the Bible, for instance, or Homer or Shakespeare. I see he covertly or plainly likes best superb verbal polish, or something old or odd.

I inhale great draught of space...the east and west are mine...and the north and south are mine...I am grandeur than I thought...I did not know i held so much goodness.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth,
That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape and tears.

O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.

My ties and ballasts leave me -- I travel -- I sail -- My elbows rest in the sea-gaps. I skirt the sierras. My palms cover continents -- I am afoot with my vision.

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!

Be not ashamed women, ... You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim -- the rocks -- the motion of the waves -- the ships, with men in them, what stranger miracles are there?

My words itch at your ears till you understand them.

Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.

Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.

I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me.
Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.

Base-ball is our game: the American game: I connect it with our national character.

I see great things in baseball.

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

Thunder on! Stride on! Democracy. Strike with vengeful stroke!

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.

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.

Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.

Either define the moment or the moment will define you.

Love, that is day and night -- love, that is sun and moon and stars, Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume, no other words but words of love, no other thought but love.

Day by day and night by night we were together -- all else has long been forgotten by me.

I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

This is what you should do; love the Earth and sun and the animals.

I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.

All truths wait in all things.

I am large, I contain multitudes.

Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.

The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.

Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

Life doesn't give You the people you want, It gives you The people you need: To love you, To hate you, To make you, To break you, And to make you the person you Were meant to be.

Sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together.