Walt Whitman Quotes about Art

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The art of art... is simplicity.

Walt Whitman

Art, Artist, Simplicity

this is thy hour o soul, thy free flight into the wordless, away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, night, sleep, death and the stars.

Walt Whitman

Art, Stars, Book

Walt Whitman, Harold Bloom (2003). “Selected Poems”, p.204, Library of America

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

Walt Whitman

Happiness, Art, Sunshine

Walt Whitman (2007). “Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition”, p.10, Courier Corporation

To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachable of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art.

Walt Whitman

Art, Animal, Perfect

Walt Whitman (1949). “The poetry and prose”

The art of art, the glory of expression, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity, and the sunlight of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity-nothing can make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness.

Walt Whitman

Art, Expression, Simplicity

Walt Whitman, David S. Reynolds (2005). “Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass”, p.115, Oxford University 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.

Walt Whitman

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

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.

Walt Whitman

Sweet, Art, Cities

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

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.

Walt Whitman

Art, School, Past

Walt Whitman, Floyd Stovall (2007). “Prose Works 1892, Volume II: Collect and Other Prose”, p.365, NYU Press

Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support ... The sailor and traveller, the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian and lexicographer are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem.

Walt Whitman

Encouragement, Art, Science

Walt Whitman (1868). “Poems”, p.46

Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.

Walt Whitman

Art, Men, Thinking

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

What a devil art thou, Poverty! How many desires - how many aspirations after goodness and truth - how many noble thoughts, loving wishes toward our fellows, beautiful imaginings thou hast crushed under thy heel, without remorse or pause!

Walt Whitman

Beautiful, Art, Wish

Walt Whitman (1998). “The Journalism: 1834-1846”, Peter Lang Pub Incorporated

Walt Whitman Quotes about Art

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