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Walt Whitman Quotes - Page 12

All Quotes Age Aging Army Art Beach Beauty Children Conformity Country Dance Death Democracy Desire Doubt Dying Earth Empathy Evil Exercise Failing Faith Feelings Freedom Friendship Funny Giving Goodness Greatness Growth Happiness Hate Heart Heaven History Humanity Identity Immortality Inspiration Inspirational Journey Joy Judging Knowledge Liberty Life Love Mankind Military Moon Nature Past Perfection Poetry Purpose Quality Reading Reality Sailing School Science Self Esteem Simplicity Sleep Soul Spring Struggle Suffering Summer Sunshine Time Travel Truth Vision Waiting Walking War Water Wealth Writing

O joy of suffering! To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To

O joy of suffering! To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!

Death, Struggle, Gun

Walt Whitman (1870). “Passage to India”, p.51, Haskell House Pub Limited

I was in the midst of it all - saw war where war is worst - not on the battlefields, no - in the hospitals ... there I mixed with it: and now I say God damn the wars - allw ars: God damn every war: God damn 'em! God damn 'em!

War, Ems, Saws

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.

Thinking, Doe, Deeds

Walt Whitman (2014). “Specimen Days & Collect”, p.480, Melville House

Long have you timidly waded Holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, Rise again, nod to me, shout, And laughingly dash with your hair.

Hair, Sea, Long

Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.76, NYU Press

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sound contribute toward me.

Thinking, Long, Sound

Walt Whitman (2013). “Walt Whitman: Selected Poems 1855-1892”, p.37, St. Martin's Press

Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth! Smile, for your lover comes!

Sunset, Dark, Moon

Walt Whitman (2013). “Walt Whitman's Song of Myself: A Sourcebook and Critical Edition”, p.42, Routledge

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.

Acceptance, Peaceful, Leaves Of Grass

Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.26, NYU Press

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.

Communication, Race, Growth

Walt Whitman (2003). “The Portable Walt Whitman”, p.557, Penguin

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.

New York, Pride, Men

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems

Shade, My Thoughts, Lasting

Walt Whitman (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1860-1867”, p.407, NYU Press

I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, judges and generals, unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a thousand years.

Leadership, Men, Years

Walt Whitman (2014). “Specimen Days & Collect”, p.417, Melville House

Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.

Land, Class, America

Walt Whitman, Floyd Stovall (2007). “Prose Works 1892: Speciman Days”, p.225, NYU Press

I cannot too often repeat that Democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted.

Real, Sleep, Historical

Walt Whitman, Floyd Stovall (2007). “Prose Works 1892, Volume II: Collect and Other Prose”, p.393, NYU Press

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side...The Bending forward and backward of the rowers...

Bending, Sides, Necks

Walt Whitman (2004). “Leaves of Grass”, p.80, Bantam Classics

I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete, The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

Life, Garden, Broken

Walt Whitman (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Walt Whitman (Illustrated)”, p.386, Delphi Classics

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

Life, Death, Memories

Walt Whitman (2016). “The Patriotic Poems”, p.72, Walt Whitman

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

Men, Stronger, Wealth

Walt Whitman, David S. Reynolds (2005). “Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass”, p.9, Oxford University Press

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.

Life, Powerful, Slave

Walt Whitman, “Poem Of Joys”

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems

Night, Through My Eyes, Spectre

"Song of Myself " l. 33 (written 1855)

My little notebooks were beginnings - they were the ground into which I dropped the seed... I would work in this way when I was out in the crowds, then put the stuff together at home.

Notebook, Home, Writing

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name.

God, Faith, Names

Walt Whitman (2016). “Song of Myself: With a Complete Commentary”, p.170, University of Iowa Press

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every inch of space is a miracle, every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; every spear of grass-the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, all these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

Dark, Men, Squares

Walt Whitman (2004). “Whitman: The Mystic Poets”, p.96, SkyLight Paths Publishing

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

Beautiful, Death, Dying

1860 Leaves of Grass, 'Proto-Leaf', later renamed 'Starting From Paumanok' (from 1867).

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.

Book, Eye, Night

"Song of Myself " l. 33 (written 1855)

A simple separate person is not contained between his hat and his boots.

Simple, People, Identity

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