Walt Whitman Quotes

“What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”

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

“The work for giants...to serve well the guns!”

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

“The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.”

“I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.”

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.”

“Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.”

“Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.”

“Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war; and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books.”

“Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,Strong and content I travel the open road.”

“O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.”

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

“The past, the future, majesty, love - if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.”

“If you done it, it ain't bragging.”

“Oh captain my captain”

“I exist as I am, that is enough.”

“Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death, it is form, union, plan, it is eternal life, it is happiness.”

“All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any, (What is less or more than a touch).”

“Me imperturbe, standing at ease in nature.”

“Resist much, obey little.”

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

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

“By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.”

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

“There was a child went forth everyday, And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or dread, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day... or for many years or stretching cycles of years.”

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

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

“All is procession; the universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion.”

“Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.”

“When I give, I give myself.”

“Now understand me well. It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.”

“We were together. I forget the rest.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“Great is Youth--equally great is Old Age--great are Day and Night.Great is Wealth--great is Poverty--great is Expression-great is Silence.”

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

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

“The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.”

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

“Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs.”

“Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, / The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young.”

“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.”

“Simplicity is the glory of expression.”

“What beauty there is in words; what a lurking curious charm in the sound some words.”

“Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.”

“Have you not learned the most in your life from those with whom you disagreed - those who saw it differently from you?”

“Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.”