Walt Whitman Quotes & Sayings

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. — Walt Whitman

There's no doubt that I've deserved my enemies, but I don't think I've deserved my friends. — Walt Whitman

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul? — Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

O amazement of things-even the least particle! — Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is
Good steadily hastening towards immortality,
And the vast all that is called Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead. — Walt Whitman

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars. — Walt Whitman

Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love. — Walt Whitman

But the people are ungrammatical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred. — Walt Whitman

The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him - it cannot fail — Walt Whitman

Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,
Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.
This, then, is life;
Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions."
-from "Starting from Paumanok — Walt Whitman

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generation of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle."
-from "Song of Myself — Walt Whitman

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do."

Me imperturbe — Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Oh captain my captain — Walt Whitman

I henceforth tread the world, chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower. — Walt Whitman

The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung. — Walt Whitman

I will not descend among professors and capitalists.
— Walt Whitman

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

The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer ... — Walt Whitman

Long and long has the grass been growing,
Long and long has the rain been falling,
Long has the globe been rolling round. — Walt Whitman

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems — Walt Whitman

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, — Walt Whitman

I wander all night in my vision,
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers ... — Walt Whitman

When I give, I give myself — Walt Whitman

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

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, with many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle - and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I break. — Walt Whitman

I do not seek good fortune - I am good fortune! — Walt Whitman

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
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 others will punctually come forever and ever. — Walt Whitman

I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death. — Walt Whitman

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

Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune. — Walt Whitman

Out of every fruition of success, no matter what, comes forth something to make a new effort necessary. — Walt Whitman

I love doctors and hate their medicine. — Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
Without one thing all will be useless,
I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different."
-from "Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand — Walt Whitman

Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs. — Walt Whitman

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

The earth recedes from me into the night, I saw that it was beautiful . . . . and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful. — Walt Whitman

Praised be the fathomless universe, for life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious. — Walt Whitman

Life breaks into beauty again and we realize that man may bring hell itself into the world, but that Nature ever patiently waits to be his natural paradise. — Walt Whitman

The ecstasy is so short but the forgetting is so long. — Walt Whitman

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

I tramp a perpetual journey. — Walt Whitman

Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality. — Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

The strongest and sweetest song remains to be sung — Walt Whitman

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

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? — Walt Whitman

Sun so generous it shall be you- Leaves of Grass — Walt Whitman

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

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. — Walt Whitman

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

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

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. — Walt Whitman

God is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his impossible standards. — Walt Whitman

Everybody is writing, writing, writing - worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of the scribblers - every damned one of us - were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work. — Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Be curious, not judgmental. — Walt Whitman

Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.
[Give me the splendid silent sun] — Walt Whitman

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? — Walt Whitman

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; — Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. — Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering I love you, before long I die,
I have travel'd a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,
For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.
Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
Be not impatient--a little space--know you I salute the air, the
ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love. — Walt Whitman

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun ... there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand ... nor look through the eyes of the dead ... nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself. — Walt Whitman

Poets to Come
POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,
Arouse! Arouse
for you must justify me
you must answer.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you. — Walt Whitman

America does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions . . . . accepts the lesson with calmness ... is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms ... perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house ... perceives that it waits a little while in the door ... that it was fittest for its days ... that its action has descended to the stalwart and wellshaped heir who approaches ... and that he shall be fittest for his days. — Walt Whitman

TO the garden, the world, anew ascending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber;
The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, have brought me again,
Amorous, mature - all beautiful to me - all wondrous;
My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous;
Existing, I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present - content with the past,
By my side, or back of me, Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her just the same. — Walt Whitman

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries. — Walt Whitman

Forsake all inhibitions, Pursue thy dreams. — Walt Whitman

Aboard at a ship's helm
A young steersman steering with care.

Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,
An ocean-bell - O a warning bell, rock'd by the waves.

O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.

For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud admonition,
The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under her grey sails,
The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds away gaily and safe.

But O ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship! Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging. — Walt Whitman

Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,
Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,
With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch'd, and the white now gray
and ashy,
One wither'd rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;
But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?
Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?
No, while memories subtly play - the past vivid as ever;
For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee,
Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:
So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,
It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid. — Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing. — Walt Whitman

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

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. — Walt Whitman

Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over ... — Walt Whitman

O the blest eyes, the happy hearts,
That see, that know the guiding thread so fine,
Along the mighty labyrinth."
-from "Song of the Universal — Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul. — Walt Whitman

Lo! body and soul!
this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land,
the South And the North in the light
Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn. — Walt Whitman

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.
— Walt Whitman

Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms! — Walt Whitman

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least. — Walt Whitman

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus! Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me. — Walt Whitman

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

The Last Invocation
At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks - from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks - with a whisper,
Set ope the doors, O Soul!
Tenderly! be not impatient!
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!
Strong is your hold, O love.) — Walt Whitman

Sex contains all, Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk; All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth, These are contain'd in sex, as parts of itself, and justifications of itself. — Walt Whitman

If you done it, it ain't bragging. — Walt Whitman

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? — Walt Whitman

And now it [grass] seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves,
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their
mother's laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.
- Song of Myself: 6 — Walt Whitman

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me? — Walt Whitman

The real war will never get in the books. — Walt Whitman

WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over;
I stand apart to hear - it never tires me.
To you, your name also;
Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name? — Walt Whitman

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud. — Walt Whitman

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? — Walt Whitman

O something unprov'd! something in a trance!
O madness amorous! O trembling!
O to escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts - with invitations!
To ascend - to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate Soul!
To be lost, if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy. — Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman