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Walt Whitman Quotes - Page 13

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

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest.

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest.

Drinking, Son, Men

"Song of Myself " l. 497 (written 1855)

To the garden of the world anew descending, Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding, The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being, Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber, The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again, amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous, My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous, Existing I peer and penetrate still, Content with the present, content with the past, By my side or back of me Eve following, Or in front, and I following her just the same.

Beautiful, Daughter, Spring

Walt Whitman, “To The Garden The World”

The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions.

Individuality, Conformity, Institutions

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

Beauty, Sound, Curious

Walt Whitman, William White (2007). “Daybooks and Notebooks, Volume III: Diary in Canada, Notebooks, Index”, p.732, NYU Press

...of two simple men I saw today on the pier in the midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends, the one to remain hung on the other's neck and passionately kissed him. While the one to depart tightly pressed the one to remain in his arms.

Simple, Men, Two

Walt Whitman (1868). “Poems”, p.293

Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now, The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the wounded,) Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus! Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

Powerful, Eye, Sight

Walt Whitman (2013). “Walt Whitman: Selected Poems 1855-1892”, p.280, St. Martin's Press

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.

Art, Children, Years

Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.149, NYU Press

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

Beautiful, War, Leaves Of Grass

'Reconciliation'

The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.

Leaves Of Grass, Individual, Theory

Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.206, NYU Press

Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,and dismiss whatever insults your own soul... It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women. The master knows that he is unspeakably great and that all are unspeakably great. There will soon be no more priests... They may wait awhile, perhaps a generation or two, dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place.A new order shall arise and they shall be the priests of man,and every man shall be his own priest.

Book, School, Reality

The purpose of democracy - supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance - is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures

Ignorance, Democracy, Rulership

Walt Whitman (2003). “The Portable Walt Whitman”, p.409, Penguin

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.

Sweet, Art, Cities

Walt Whitman (2012). “Specimen Days & Collect”, p.104, Courier Corporation

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

Strong, Army, Power

Walt Whitman (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1860-1867”, p.335, NYU Press

My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth. I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them

Determination, Thinking, Compassion

Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.175, NYU Press

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation: The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer, I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.

Night, Sky, Sound

Walt Whitman (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Walt Whitman (Illustrated)”, p.42, Delphi Classics

O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! My South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!

Blood, Evil, Southern

Walt Whitman (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1860-1867”, p.408, NYU Press

That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.

Beautiful, Law, Games

"With Walt Whitman in Camden". Book by Horace Traubel, Vol. IV (p. 508), 1906.

With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons. 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. I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

Strong, Fall, Blow

Walt Whitman (2009). “The Americanness of Walt Whitman”, p.13, Wildside Press LLC

Joy, shipmate, joy! (Pleased to my soul at death I cry), Our life is closed, our life begins, The long, long anchorage we leave, The ship is clear at last, she leaps! She swiftly courses from the shore, Joy, shipmate, joy!

Life, Long, Joy

Walt Whitman, “Joy, Shipmate, Joy!”

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

People, Sin, Ill

Walt Whitman (2003). “The Portable Walt Whitman”, p.410, Penguin

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

Reading, Book, Men

'So Long!'

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd / And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, / I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Stars, Spring, Night

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" l. 1 (1881)

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).

Waiting, Needs, Bigs

Walt Whitman (2016). “Song of Myself: With a Complete Commentary”, p.99, University of Iowa Press

To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim - the rocks - the motion of the waves - the ships, with men in them, what stranger miracles are there?

Beach, Ocean, Marine

Walt Whitman (1861). “Leaves of Grass”, p.220

There is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth - but all is truth without exception; And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am, And sing and laugh and deny nothing.

Laughing, Vacuums, Flaws

Walt Whitman (1995). “The Works of Walt Whitman”, p.428, Wordsworth Editions

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