Whitman Quotes

For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy? ~ Walt Whitman

I dance with the dancers. ~ Walt Whitman

I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple--or a green field--a place to enter, and in which to feel. ~ Mary Oliver

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. ~ Walt Whitman

I will not descend among professors and capitalists.
~ 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

You can't stand for too many things. You can't use the bully pulpit for too many things. So, I promise you, every day, I am going to talk about jobs, spending, and education. ~ Meg Whitman

The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his. ~ Edgar Lee Masters

I tramp a perpetual journey. ~ Walt Whitman

The purpose of democracy - supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance - is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures ~ Walt Whitman

Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling. ~ Walt Whitman

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. ~ Walt Whitman

American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did. ~ Diane Wakoski

WE two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on
the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness
chasing,
Fulfilling our foray. ~ Walt Whitman

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. ~ Walt Whitman

It avails not, time nor place
distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the
bright flow, I was refresh'd,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift
current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the
thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd. ~ Walt Whitman

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

In fact any good mind properly taught can think like Euclid and like Walt Whitman. The Renaissance, as we saw, was full of such minds, equally competent as poet and as engineers. The modern notion of "the two cultures," incompatible under one skull, comes solely from the proliferation of specialties in science; but these also divide scientists into groups that do not understand one another, the cause being the sheer mass of detail and the diverse terminologies. In essence the human mind remains one, not 2 or 60 different organs. ~ Jacques Barzun

Life doesn't give You the people you want, It gives you The people you need: To love you, To hate you, To make you, To break you, And to make you the person you Were meant to be. ~ Walt Whitman

What's sort of interesting about the whole public relations disaster that is the Net, in some ways, is that the fundamentals are really good. ~ Meg Whitman

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

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander'd
alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories, sad brother - from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither - ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man - yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them - but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing. ~ Walt Whitman

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land. ~ Walt Whitman

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn. ~ Walt Whitman

It's funny, because I'm so associated with digital art and computer art, and yet I spend so little time in front of the computer. ~ Keith Fullerton 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

Human bodies are words, myriads of words; In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay; ~ Walt Whitman

I resist any thing better than my own diversity, Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my place. ~ Walt Whitman

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

Art is a luxury. It's not necessary for you to - you can work your job and you can make some money and never know who Walt Whitman was, and never read a poem. ~ Wynton Marsalis

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me. ~ Walt Whitman

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough ~ Walt Whitman

What cities the light or warmth penetrates I penetrate those cities myself,
All islands to which birds wing their way I wing my way myself. ~ Walt Whitman

I only have room to do things that I have a love for in my life. ~ Mae Whitman

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

While everyone adjusted themselves and their packs, Donna sniffed curiously at Louie's nose. Her attitude suggested she might want to make friends with the giant dog; Lou couldn't resist the temptation. Once Donna lured Louie in, she slowly, cautiously, turned about to align her hooves with Louie's head. Perhaps she didn't like dogs. Perhaps she didn't want a rival for Monty's attentions. Perhaps she was merely an impish tarkus much like the Dane himself. Cody watched as the Dane failed to grasp the gravity of his predicament. At the last moment, Cody smacked Louie's hind end, scuttling the devious donkey's murderous trap. ~ Map Whitman

I like the scientific spirit - the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine - it always keeps the way beyond open - always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake - after a wrong guess. ~ Walt Whitman

After ministering each day to the hundreds of young men who had endured ghastly wounds, submitted to amputations without anesthesia, and often died without the comfort of family or friends, Whitman wrote, nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it used to. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

There's no telling from poem to poem where this brilliant 'conversation' about maleness and gender will lead
there are poems about husbands and wives, parents and children, Elvis, Apollo, Walt Whitman, rhythms of its politics. Manthology is a remarkably honest and enormously heartening collection. ~ Nancy Eimers

In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word. ~ Walt Whitman

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

I love to watch 'Chopped,' 'Jeopardy,' and 'Breaking Bad.' You can't pass up that one. Oh! One other show I love to watch is 'Suburgatory.' ~ Mae Whitman

I had a friend where it turned out that she hated my guts, all through our friendship. I thought she was my best friend, and then, in high school, she turned on me and had sordid affairs with all of the people that I'd dated. It was less hurtful because I was in high school, so it was more like, 'What's wrong with you? Gross!' ~ Mae Whitman

Freedom is not in doing what you want to do, but in becoming what you want to be. ~ Ardis Whitman

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. ~ Walt Whitman

Now I will do nothing but listen to accrue what I hear into this song. To let sounds contribute toward it. I hear the sound I love. The sound of the human voice. I hear all sounds running together. ~ Walt Whitman

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. ~ Walt Whitman

I am satisfied ... I see, dance, laugh, sing. ~ Walt Whitman

As Walt Whitman correctly surmised, we are large and we harbour multitudes within us. And those multitudes are locked in chronic battle. There is an ongoing conversation among the different factions in your brain, each competing to control the single output channel of your behaviour. ~ Damian Thompson

She didn't believe there was anything like perfect, fairytale love. Most people were flawed and prone to mistakes. She thought herself a romantic but treated love with the same practicality she did most things. They'd had fall-outs and misunderstandings but she'd never been free to be herself like she was with Edward. She couldn't imagine being with another person after him. ~ Myne Whitman

I accept Reality and dare not question it, Materialism first and last imbuing. ~ Walt Whitman

Experience means nothing unless you're paying attention. ~ Stephen Smoke

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 gotta say - if I clicked on a movie interview, and the first part was all about Walt Whitman, I'd love that article. ~ Adam McKay

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

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! ~ Walt Whitman

My very identities as a reader and a writer began at the Walt Whitman branch library. ~ Paula Spencer

Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy. ~ Walt Whitman

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

O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself - projecting me;
O solitary me, listening - nevermore shall I cease perpetuating you;
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night,
By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous'd - the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me. ~ Walt Whitman

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

If we don't rededicate ourselves to education with the same attitude Americans have applied to going to the moon and fighting wars, the results will be profound. We will gradually lose our successful workforce. ~ Meg Whitman

Now, in New Jersey, we have more government workers per square mile than any state in America. But since I've been governor we now have fewer people on the state payroll at any time since Christie Whitman left office in January 2001. That's the right direction, Mr. President, not the wrong direction. ~ Chris Christie

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

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person. ~ Walt Whitman

When one reaches out to help another he touches the face of God. ~ 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

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

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

if my memory serves me right, here is my genealogical line: Boccaccio, Petronius, Rabelais, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Maeterlinck, Romain Rolland, Plotinus, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Dostoievsky (and other Russian writers of the Nineteenth Century), the ancient Greek dramatists, theElizabethan dramatists (excluding Shakespeare), Theodore Dreiser, Knut Hamsun, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Elie Faure, Oswald Spengler, Marcel Proust, Van Gogh, the Dadaists and Surrealists, Balzac, Lewis Carroll, Nijinsky, Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Giono, Celine, everything I read on Zen Buddhism, everything I read about China, India, Tibet, Arabia, Africa, and of course the Bible, the men who wrote it and especially the men who made the King James version, for it was the language of the Bible rather than its "message" which I got first and which I will never shake off. ~ Henry Miller

I'd like the people to remember me as having a good voice and a clean suit. ~ Slim Whitman

The aster greets us as we pass With her faint smile. ~ Sarah Helen Whitman

With every good-bye, you learn. ~ Joy Whitman

'Perfect' is the enemy of 'good enough'. ~ Meg Whitman

I believe that much unseen is also here. ~ Walt Whitman

The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions. ~ Walt Whitman

Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet.... the effect upon me of my early life.....
of the ward and city I live in....of the nation,
The latest news....discoveries, inventions, societies....
authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, business, compliments,
dues,
The real or fancified indifference of some man or woman
I love,
The sickness of one of my folks- or of myself....or
ill-doing....or loss or lack of money....or
depressions or exaltations,
They come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself. ~ Walt Whitman

I use a laptop more as a tool, as sort of the central artery. Everything goes through the digital audio card of my computer, but if I had my druthers I'd do everything in dedicated hardware. ~ Keith Fullerton Whitman

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

Because if you don't have a great workforce, a great higher education system, you're not going to have the next eBay, the next AmGen, the next, you know, Miasole, and not only California but America is going to fall behind a whole new competitive context which is obviously China, India, and other countries. ~ Meg Whitman

It is very clear that voice communications is moving on to the Internet. In the end, the price that anyone can provide for voice transmission on the Net will trend toward zero. ~ Meg Whitman

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

Walt Whitman was right about at least one thing. You will contradict yourself. You are large. You contain multitudes. ~ Matt Haig

I henceforth tread the world, chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower. ~ 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

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

To be in any form, what is that?
(round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,)
If nothing lay more develop'd the quahung in it's callous shell were enough.
Mine is no callous shell.
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and I am happy, to touch my person to someone else's is about as much as I can stand. ~ Walt Whitman

And as to me, I know of nothing else but miracles. WALT WHITMAN ~ Jack Kornfield

If Henry Miller often sounded like a village idiot, it is because, like Whitman, he was the rest of the village as well. ~ Gore Vidal

I situate myself, and seat myself,
And where you recline I shall recline,
For every armchair belonging to you as good as belongs to me.
I loaf and curl up my tail
I yawn and loaf at my ease after rolling in the catnip patch.
(From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP) ~ Henry N. Beard

Sometimes when I've got a baseball player alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him. And the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks its foreplay. ~ Ron Shelton

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

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

And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them,
And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere,
even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied. ~ Walt Whitman

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

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

I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you."
-from "To You ~ Walt Whitman

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."
-from "Song of Myself ~ Walt Whitman

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 ~ Walt Whitman