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Whitman Walt Quotes & Sayings

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Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Great is life ... and real and mystical ... wherever and whoever, Great is death ... Sure as life holds all parts together, death holds all parts together; Sure as the stars return again after they merge on the light, death is as great as life. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

He cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Or may-be one who is puzzled at me.
As if I were not puzzled at myself! — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by regular contact with outdoor growths - animals, trees, sun warmth and free skies - or it will dwindle and pale. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Of all races and eras these States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets, — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Dermot McCabe

The best way to understand the soul of America is read Walt Whitman's poetry — Dermot McCabe

Whitman Walt Quotes By Stephen Smoke

Just because you have information, doesn't mean you're informed. — Stephen Smoke

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

These are the days that must happen to you. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense ... [T]he wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years, to join the refrain; But in my soul I plainly heard. Murmuring out of its myriad leaves, Down from its lofty top, rising two hundred feet high, Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs - out of its foot-thick bark, That chant of the seasons and time - chant, not of the past only, but of the future ... — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By A.S. King

I get the urge to feel it, too, so when she takes her hand away, I turn her toward me and I feel the edges of New Jersey. I kiss Hoboken and Atlantic City. I kiss Newark and Trenton. I kiss Camden, and then I follow the road west, over the Walt Whitman Bridge into Pennsylvania. And I kiss home. — A.S. King

Whitman Walt Quotes By Wynton Marsalis

Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is still in print. They're debating right now over Mark Twain. He's still available. Winslow Homer can still be seen. Our arts are - they're there. We got to go get them and understand that this is an important legacy for our country. — Wynton Marsalis

Whitman Walt Quotes By Anonymous

Am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness. - Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road — Anonymous

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

In all people I see myself - none more, and not one a barleycorn less; And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death, it is form, union, plan, it is eternal life, it is happiness. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

I swear I see what is better than to tell the best,
It is always to leave the best untold."
-from "A Song of the Rolling Earth — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By William James

The supreme contemporary example of such an inability to feel evil is of course Walt Whitman. "His favorite occupation," writes his disciple, Dr. Bucke "seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural sounds. — William James

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Remember my words, I may again return,
I love you, I depart from materials,
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Jon Kabat-Zinn

One world is aware, and by 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. WALT WHITMAN, Leaves of Grass — Jon Kabat-Zinn

Whitman Walt Quotes By Patti Smith

I don't know about that. I'm not a very analytical person. I have various impulses. I've often quoted Walt Whitman's phrase "I contain multitudes." I understand that. — Patti Smith

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Great is Youth
equally great is Old Age
great are Day and Night.
Great is Wealth
great is Poverty
great is Expression-great is Silence. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
And until one and all shall delight us, and we them. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every inch of space is a miracle, every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; every spear of grass-the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, all these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

There's a man in the world who is never turned down, whatever he chances to stray; he gets the glad hand in the populous town, or out where the farmers makes hay; he's greeted with pleasure on deserts of sand, and deep in the aisles of the woods; wherever he goes there's a welcoming hand-he's the man who delivers the goods. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Andrew Sullivan

I think there were two great gay Americans obviously, and that was Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman. — Andrew Sullivan

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman Rostow

It is in the American interest to put an end to Nationhood. That is the goal in global government. America must get out of the United Nations or our sovereign Republic will not survive. — Walt Whitman Rostow

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Many a good man I have seen go under. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

A great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Jerry Saltz

It's art that pushes against psychological and social expectations, that tries to transform decay into something generative, that is replicative in a baroque way, that isn't about progress, and wants to - as Walt Whitman put it - 'contain multitudes.' — Jerry Saltz

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric product
And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

The greatest poet does not moralize or make applications of morals ... he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons but its own. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

I announce adhesiveness-I say it shall be limitless, unloosen'd;
I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Be curious not judgemental. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Come, said my Soul
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after death invisibly return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth's soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas'd smiles I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning - as, first, I here and now,
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name, — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Now I see that there is no such thing as love unreturn'd. The pay is certain, one way or another. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Doris Kearns Goodwin

Walt Whitman, who worked as a nurse in the hospital wards, that the harrowing experience made one's "little cares and difficulties" disappear "into nothing. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

The souls moving along ... are they invisible while the least atom of the stones is visible? — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay
the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

I keep thinking about you every few minutes all day. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Robert Green Ingersoll

Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy air, the air of slaves,
Like lightning Europe le'pt forth,
Sombre, superb and terrible. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Octavio Paz

Walt Whitman is the only great modern poet who does not seem to experience discord when he faces his world. Not even solitude - his monologue is a universal chorus. — Octavio Paz

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and
can be none in the future,
And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn'd to
beautiful results,
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death,
And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are
compact,
And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each
as profound as any. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

You want to know a sure way to lose money? Buy what's popular and don't know what you are investing in. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Anne Waldman

You really felt a radical shift in the advance of a poetics that had really been engendered by [Walt] Whitman. This was very exciting. I wanted to work in this environment. — Anne Waldman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Peace is always beautiful. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-ward resumes its liberty. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked; — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality ... it is idle to try to alarm me — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Agonies are one of my changes of garments. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed! — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Stout as a horse — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Forsake all inhibitions, Pursue thy dreams. — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul ... — Walt Whitman

Whitman Walt Quotes By 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

Whitman Walt Quotes By Walt Whitman

Nothing endures but personal qualities. — Walt Whitman