Walt Whitman quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Walt Whitman on Wise Famous Quotes.

I keep thinking about you every few minutes all day.

is that the President? Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep,

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.

Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,
Be not afraid of my body.

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

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.

The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.

Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep for the dead I loved so well.

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

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.

I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul ...

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.

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

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

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

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

Agonies are one of my changes of garments.

The sum of all known value and respect, I add up in you, whoever you are.

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.

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

There is no God any more divine than Yourself.

And I or you pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth.

When I give, I give myself

The strongest and sweetest song remains to be sung

There will never be any more perfection than there is now.

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

O amazement of things-even the least particle!

Day by day and night by night we were together - all else has long been forgotten by me.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,

I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.

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

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

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

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

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

From imperfection's murkiest cloud,
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,
One flash of Heaven's glory."
-from "Song of the Universal

The real war will never get in the books.

I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.

The poet is individual - he is complete in himself: the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not.

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

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

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

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

I accept Time absolutely.
It alone is without flaw,
It alone rounds and completes all,
That mystic baffling wonder.

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries.

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

Stand up for the Crazy and Stupid

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

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

Old age: The estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours into the Great Sea.

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

Happiness, not in another place but this place ... not for another hour, but this hour.

I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,
And I become the other dreamers.

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

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

O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do."

Me imperturbe

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.

I tramp a perpetual journey.

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

Camden was originally an accident, but I shall never be sorry I was left over in Camden. It has brought me blessed returns.

Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.

The future is no more uncertain than the present.

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

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

The best writing has no lace on its sleeves.

I am the man, I suffered, I was there.

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

O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.

Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.

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.

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

My words itch at your ears till you understand them

Forsake all inhibitions, Pursue thy dreams.

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

I love doctors and hate their medicine.

The whole purpose of the universe is unerringly aimed at one thing - you.

There's no doubt that I've deserved my enemies, but I don't think I've deserved my friends.

Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over ...

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 only the novice in political economy who thinks it is the duty of government to make its citizens happy - government has no such office.

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

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

I am not contain'd between my hat and boots.

Something there is more immortal even than the stars.

As to me,I know of nothing but miracles.

From this hour, freedom! Going where I like, my own master ...

Peace is always beautiful.

The earth recedes from me into the night, I saw that it was beautiful . . . . and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.

The President eats dirt and excrement for his daily meals, likes it and tries to force it on The States.

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

Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.

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

I do not call one greater and one smaller, that which fills it period and place is equal to any.

The beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.

I am not contain'd between my hat and my boots.

I will You, in all, Myself, with promise to never desert you,
To which I sign my name.

Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.