Top 497 Quotes & Sayings by Walt Whitman
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American poet Walt Whitman.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
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.
Nothing endures but personal qualities.
I exist as I am, that is enough.
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?
Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
The future is no more uncertain than the present.
I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.
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.
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
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.
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.
I accept reality and dare not question it.
There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.
The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.
Simplicity is the glory of expression.
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.
Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.
I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.
To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.
Be curious, not judgmental.
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.
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
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.
All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.
Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?
When I give I give myself.
If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred.
To have great poets, there must be great audiences.
Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
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.
To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.
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.
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.
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.
Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.
We convince by our presence.
The beautiful uncut hair of graves.
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.
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.
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.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.
Freedom - to walk free and own no superior.
The real war will never get in the books.
Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.
In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.
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