Walt Whitman Quotes

I sing the body that is electric! I celebrate the Self yet to be unveiled!

O amazement of things-even the least particle!

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

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery here we stand.

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

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.

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

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 turned to beautiful results.

THIS dust was once the Man, / Gentle, plain, just and resolute—under whose cautious hand, / Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, / Was saved the Union of These States.

Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.

Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or whether with freedom.

What has miserable, inefficient Mexico...to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?

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

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries.

The Americans, like the English, probably make love worse than any other race.

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?

A simple separate person is not contained between his hat and his boots.

This hour I tell things in confidence/ I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

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

The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss... it is inevitable as 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.

Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs.

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

Camerado! This is no book; who touches this touches a man.

The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them

And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.

There is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth - but all is truth without exception; And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am, And sing and laugh and deny nothing.

I have no mockings or arguments; I witness and wait.

Ah little recks the laborer, How near his work is holding him to God, The loving Laborer through space and time

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.

I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.

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

The past, the future, majesty, love - if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

I will not descend among professors and capitalists.

I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!

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.

What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

In nothing is there more evolution than the American mind.

Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her that it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

To behold the day-break! The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows, The air tastes good to my palate.

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.

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.

For all these new and evolutionary facts, meanings, purposes, new poetic messages, new forms and expressions, are inevitable.

There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became.

Have you not learned the most in your life from those with whom you disagreed - those who saw it differently from you?

I do not seek good fortune - I am good fortune!

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space.

When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, My breath will not be obedient to its organs, I become a dumb man.