Walt Whitman Quotes

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

“A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.”

“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.”

“Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find."”

“My words itch at your ears till you understand them”

“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.”

“I act as the tongue of you, ... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.”

“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?”

“I lean and loaf at my ease... observing a spear of summer grass.”

“The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.”

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

“Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! — ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is — nor what faith or art or health really is.”

“I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.”

“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.”

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”

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

“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.”

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

“The best writing has no lace on its sleeves.”

“The future is no more uncertain than the present.”

“When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand, … Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further, I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave, But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.”

“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.”

“Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose.”

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

“A man can be a hero in any profession”