Top 497 Quotes & Sayings by Walt Whitman - Page 4

When I give, I give myself.

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

Keep your face always toward the sunshine everything could be worse but isn't and so we are justified in being grateful - and shadows everything could be better but isn't and so it is easy to be bitter 'unless you decide to look on the bright side will fall behind you.

I think it is lost.....but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost .

All music is is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.

Be not dishearten'd -- Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet; Those who love each other shall become invincible.

Most works are most beautiful without ornament.

Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.

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

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.

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.

I love doctors and hate their medicine.

By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.

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

All truths wait in all things.

Something there is more immortal even than the stars.

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

I dote on myself. There is a lot of me and all so luscious.

Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from, The scent of these armpits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

Whoever degrades another degrades me.

My call is the call of battle- I nourish active rebellion;/ He going with me must go well armed.

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

O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?

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

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.

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

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

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

The mother condemned for a witch and burnt with dry wood, and her children gazing on; The hounded slave that flags in the race and leans by the fence, blowing and covered with sweat, The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, The murderous buckshot and the bullets, All these I feel or am.

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done.

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

From this hour, freedom! Going where I like, my own master.

Americans should know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.

A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing lacking.

When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand, … Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further, I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave, But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.

A perfect writer would make words sing, dance, kiss, do the male and female act, bear children, weep, bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do anything that man or woman or the natural powers can do.

And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the other.

Over all the sky - the sky! Far, far out of reach, studded with eternal stars.

There is no God any more divine than Yourself.

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 dreamed in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dreamed that was the new City of Friends; Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest; It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words.

Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious—surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.

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

I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

My rule has been, so far as I could have any rule (I could have no cast-iron rule) - my rule has been, to write what I have to say the best way I can - then lay it aside - taking it up again after some time and reading it afresh - the mind new to it. If there's no jar in the new reading, well and good - that's sufficient for me.

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.

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.

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

Where the earth is, we are.

The art of art, the glory of expression, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity, and the sunlight of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity-nothing can make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness.

I see the President almost every day. I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face with its deep-cut lines, the eyes always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed.

O the joy of my spirit - it is uncaged - it darts like lightning!

I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul.

I refuse putting from me the best that I am.

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.

Whoever you are, motion and reflection are especially for you, The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.

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.

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