Quotes by Walt Whitman

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
– Walt Whitman
After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.
– Walt Whitman
All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.
– Walt Whitman
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.
– Walt Whitman
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
– Walt Whitman
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
– Walt Whitman
Baseball will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.
– Walt Whitman
Be curious, not judgmental.
– Walt Whitman
Camerado, I give you my hand, I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself?
– Walt Whitman
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
– Walt Whitman
Freedom - to walk free and own no superior.
– Walt Whitman
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.
– Walt Whitman
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.
– Walt Whitman
Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?
– Walt Whitman
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
– Walt Whitman
Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.
– Walt Whitman
Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.
– Walt Whitman
How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!
– Walt Whitman
I accept reality and dare not question it.
– Walt Whitman
I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.
– Walt Whitman
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
– 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
I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease... observing a spear of summer grass.
– Walt Whitman
I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.
– Walt Whitman
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
– Walt Whitman
I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.
– Walt Whitman
I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes - but is that all?
– Walt Whitman
I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.
– Walt Whitman
I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.
– Walt Whitman
I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.
– Walt Whitman
If you done it, it ain't bragging.
– Walt Whitman
Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.
– 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
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
– 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
O lands! O all so dear to me - what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is.
– Walt Whitman
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express 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
Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.
– Walt Whitman
Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.
– Walt Whitman
Press close bare-bosomed night - press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds! night of the large few stars! Still nodding night! mad naked summer night.
– Walt Whitman
Produce great men, the rest follows.
– Walt Whitman
Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.
– Walt Whitman
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
– 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
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
– Walt Whitman
The beautiful uncut hair of graves.
– Walt Whitman
The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.
– Walt Whitman
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
– Walt Whitman
The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
– Walt Whitman
The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.
– Walt Whitman
The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.
– 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
The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
– Walt Whitman
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.
– Walt Whitman
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
– Walt Whitman
There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.
– Walt Whitman
There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.
– 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
This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.
– Walt Whitman
To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
– Walt Whitman
To have great poets, there must be great audiences.
– Walt Whitman
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
– Walt Whitman
To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.
– Walt Whitman
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.
– Walt Whitman
We convince by our presence.
– Walt Whitman
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!
– Walt Whitman
Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.
– Walt Whitman
When I give I give myself.
– Walt Whitman
Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.
– Walt 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, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.
– Walt Whitman
Youth, large, lusty, loving - Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?
– Walt Whitman
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.
– Walt Whitman
If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred.
– Walt Whitman
The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.
– Walt Whitman
The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.
– Walt Whitman
The real war will never get in the books.
– Walt Whitman
The future is no more uncertain than the present.
– Walt Whitman
Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
– Walt Whitman
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.
– Walt Whitman
I may be as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
– Walt Whitman