Walt Whitman Quotes

I sing the body electric.

The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more.

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

To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachable of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art.

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

O soul, thou pleasest me - I thee;
Sailing these seas, or on the hills, or waking in the night,
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time, and Space, and Death, like waters flowing,
Bear me, indeed, as through the regions infinite,
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear - lave me all over;
Bathe me, O God, in thee - mounting to thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.
O Thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath.



from "Passage to India

Soothe! soothe! soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,
But my love soothes not me, not me."
-from "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

Simplicity is the glory of expression.

Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.

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

What will be will be well - for what is is well,
To take interest is well, and not to take interest is well.

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw patches down upon me also; The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious; My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre? would not people laugh at me? It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil; I am he who knew what it was to be evil; I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, Blabbed, blushed, resented, lied, stole, grudged; Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak; Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant; The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me; The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting; Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting.

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

The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

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

Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

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

After all, the great lesson is that no special natural sights---not Alps, Niagara, Yosemite or anything else---is more grand or more beautiful than the ordinary sunrise and sunset, earth and sky, the common trees and grass.

What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior?

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love.

There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man's bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die.

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

The ecstasy is so short but the forgetting is so long.

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.

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.

The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.

And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, / No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

I loafe and invite my soul.

The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.

This is what you should do:
Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
Argue not concerning God,
Have patience and indulgence toward the people ...
Reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
Dismiss what insults your very soul,
And your flesh shall become a great poem.

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.

Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
The hundred & fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.

An electric chain seems to vibrate, as it were, between our brain and him or her preserved there [in a Daguerreotype] so well by the limner's cunning. Time, space, both are annihilated, and we identify the semblance with the reality.

A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls.

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?

What a devil art thou, Poverty! How many desires - how many aspirations after goodness and truth - how many noble thoughts, loving wishes toward our fellows, beautiful imaginings thou hast crushed under thy heel, without remorse or pause!

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

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

Vivas to those who have fail'd!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!

The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.

Every existence has its idiom, every thing and idiom and tongue.

My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth.
I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands,
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them

Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the imperious waves,

Sail, sail thy best, ship of democracy,
Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the present only,
The past is also stored in thee,
Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the western continent alone,
Earth's resume entire floats upon thy keel, O ship, is steadied by thy spars,
With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee,
With all their ancient struggles , martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents,
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant..

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin , or even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.

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.

O America! Because you build for mankind I build for you.

Not one is dissatisfied ... not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not

As to me,I know of nothing but miracles.

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.

He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots.

Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the
settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat!

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

O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth,
Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I
have not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet
untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and
bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single
object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart
upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.

The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.

Of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous . . . Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology.

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

To drive free, to love free, to court destruction with taunts. One brief house of madness and joy!

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

Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her shall I follow.

Conceiv'd out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism -personifying ill unparalleled ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation) -only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works -works in some respects greater than anything else ill recorded literature.

There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.

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

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

Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty, The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes, The gentle soft-born measureless light, The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon, The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.

Lo, the unbounded sea, On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even her moonsails. The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately - below emulous waves press forward, They surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam. I

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean
But I shall be good health to you nonetheless
And filter and fibre your blood.

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.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean

The real war will never get in the books.

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.

America doesn't know today how proud she ought to be of her Ingersoll.

I was in the midst of it all - saw war where war is worst - not on the battlefields, no - in the hospitals ... there I mixed with it: and now I say God damn the wars - allw ars: God damn every war: God damn 'em! God damn 'em!

The words of my book are nothing, the drift of it everything.

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

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.

O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
With love, with love.

Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

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

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.

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

Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.

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.

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.

I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys of Switzerland - I mark the long winters and the isolation.

Of Equality
as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself
as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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.

Produce great men, the rest follows.

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

Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, when I give I give myself.

Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world and that there is no single exception, and that never since our earth gathered itself in a mass have deceit or subterfuge or prevarication attracted its smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade - and that through the enveloping wealth and rank of a state or the whole republic of states a sneak or sly person shall be discovered and despised. . . . and that the soul has never been once fooled and never can be fooled. . . . and thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only a foetid puff. . . . and there never grew up in any of the continents of the globe nor upon any planet or satellite or star, nor upon the asteroids, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor in the midst of density, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in that condition that follows what we term death, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action afterward of vitality, nor in any process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth.

With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons. 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. I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

Freedom: to walk free and own no superior

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.

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

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!