Whitman, Walt quotes
1819-1892 American PoetDo I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).
Whitman, Walt
Contradiction
If you done it, it ain t bragging.
Whitman, Walt
Conceit
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.
Whitman, Walt
Cities and City Life
To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Whitman, Walt
Death and Dying
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
Whitman, Walt
Death and Dying
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.
Whitman, Walt
Change
Nothing endures but personal qualities.
Whitman, Walt
Character
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.
Whitman, Walt
Control
Camerado! This is no book; who touches this touches a man.
Whitman, Walt
Books - Reading
A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.
Whitman, Walt
Cities and City Life
Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.
Whitman, Walt
Class
The beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Whitman, Walt
Burial
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
Whitman, Walt
Books - Reading
All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.
Whitman, Walt
Frankness
Freedom -- to walk free and own no superior.
Whitman, Walt
Freedom
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!)
Whitman, Walt
Festivals
I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don t believe I deserved my friends.
Whitman, Walt
Enemies
Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.
Whitman, Walt
Fortune
Produce great men, the rest follows.
Whitman, Walt
Example
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.
Whitman, Walt
Humankind
When I give I give myself.
Whitman, Walt
Giving
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God s name. And I leave them where they are, for I know that wherever I go, others will punctually come for ever and ever.
Whitman, Walt
God
A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
Whitman, Walt
Flowers
This face is a dog s snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.
Whitman, Walt
Faces
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?
Whitman, Walt
Friends and Friendship
Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.
Whitman, Walt
Self-sacrifice
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.
Whitman, Walt
Night
Be curious, not judgmental.
Whitman, Walt
Judgment and Judges
This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.
Whitman, Walt
Life and Living
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?
Whitman, Walt
Learning
Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.
Whitman, Walt
Masses
The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.
Whitman, Walt
Independence
To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.
Whitman, Walt
Manners
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.
Whitman, Walt
Losers and Losing
I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.
Whitman, Walt
Self-love
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.
Whitman, Walt
Parties
I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
Whitman, Walt
Loneliness
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.
Whitman, Walt
Language
O lands! O all so dear to me -- what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is.
Whitman, Walt
Land
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.
Whitman, Walt
Liberty
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.
Whitman, Walt
Professions and Professionals
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Whitman, Walt
Miracles
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
Whitman, Walt
Miracles
I accept reality and dare not question it.
Whitman, Walt
Reality
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!
Whitman, Walt
Poverty and The Poor
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.
Whitman, Walt
Nature
Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.
Whitman, Walt
Time and Time Management
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.
Whitman, Walt
People
We convince by our presence.
Whitman, Walt
Present
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
Whitman, Walt
Sympathy
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
Whitman, Walt
Obesity
The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?
Whitman, Walt
Past
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Whitman, Walt
Nature
Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.
Whitman, Walt
Opposites
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.
Whitman, Walt
Travel and Tourism
I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
Whitman, Walt
Self-esteem
Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.
Whitman, Walt
Truth
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
Whitman, Walt
Simplicity
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?
Whitman, Walt
Universe
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?
Whitman, Walt
Speech
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
Whitman, Walt
Style
The city sleeps and the country sleeps, the living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, the old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; and these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, and such as it is to be of these more or less I am, and of these one and all I weave the song of myself.
Whitman, Walt
Sleep
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.
Whitman, Walt
Tyranny
There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.
Whitman, Walt
Things and Little Things
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with such applause in the lecture room, how soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself, in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, looked up in perfect silence at the stars.
Whitman, Walt
Astronomy
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
Whitman, Walt
Age and Aging
There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
Whitman, Walt
Education
O the joy of the strong-brawn d fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.
Whitman, Walt
Army and Navy
Their manners, speech, dress, friendships, -- the freshness and candor of their physiognomy -- the picturesque looseness of their carriage -- their deathless attachment to freedom -- their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean -- the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states -- the fierceness of their roused resentment -- their curiosity and welcome of novelty -- their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy -- their susceptibility to a slight -- the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors -- the fluency of their speech -- their delight in music, a sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul -- their good temper and open-handedness -- the terrible significance of their elections, the President s taking off his hat to them, not they to him -- these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.
Whitman, Walt
America
They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago.
Whitman, Walt
Animals
How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!
Whitman, Walt
Argument
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
Whitman, Walt
Audiences
Youth, large, lusty, loving -- Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?
Whitman, Walt
Youth