Walt Whitman Quotes - Page 14

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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!

Walt Whitman

Sunset, Dark, Moon

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

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And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

Walt Whitman

Sympathy, Funeral, Leaves Of Grass

Walt Whitman (2009). “The Americanness of Walt Whitman”, p.41, Wildside Press LLC

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I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men-I saw them;
I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war;
But I saw they were not as was thought;
They themselves were fully at rest-they suffer'd not;
The living remain'd and suffer'd-the mother suffer'd,
And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffer'd,
And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.

Walt Whitman

Mother, Veterans Day, Children

Walt Whitman (1870). “Passage to India”, p.39, Haskell House Pub Limited

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People who serve you without love get even behind your back.

Walt Whitman

Best Love, People, Behind Your Back

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

Walt Whitman

Hero, Men, May

Walt Whitman (2009). “The Americanness of Walt Whitman”, p.41, Wildside Press LLC

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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!

Walt Whitman

War, Ems, Saws

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Copulation is no more foul to me than death is.

Walt Whitman

Sex, Foul

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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.

Walt Whitman

Real, Sleep, Historical

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

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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.

Walt Whitman

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

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Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity.

Walt Whitman

Men, Eccentric, Sanity

Walt Whitman (2005). “Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass”, p.5, Oxford University Press

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Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.

Walt Whitman

Time, Time Management, Accepting

Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.30, NYU Press

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There's a man in the world who is never turned down, whatever he chances to stray; he gets the glad hand in the populous town, or out where the farmers makes hay; he's greeted with pleasure on deserts of sand, and deep in the aisles of the woods; wherever he goes there's a welcoming hand-he's the man who delivers the goods.

Walt Whitman

Men, Hands, Desert

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Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her that it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

Walt Whitman

Lucky, Leaves Of Grass, Born

'Song of Myself' (1855) st. 7

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Sex contains all, Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk; All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth, These are contain'd in sex, as parts of itself, and justifications of itself.

Walt Whitman

Song, Sex, Passion

Walt Whitman (2004). “Leaves of Grass”, p.87, Bantam Classics

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

Walt Whitman

Animal, Night, Self

Walt Whitman (2013). “Song of Myself: The First Edition of 1855 + The Death Bed Edition of 1892”, p.188, e-artnow

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Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery here we stand.

Walt Whitman

Horse, Mystery, Stout

Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.3, NYU Press

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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.

Walt Whitman

Communication, Race, Growth

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

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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.

Walt Whitman

Powerful, Eye, Sight

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

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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.

Walt Whitman

Leadership, Men, Years

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

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

Walt Whitman

God, Faith, Names

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

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Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

Walt Whitman

Beautiful, Death, Dying

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

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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.

Walt Whitman

Book, School, Reality

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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.

Walt Whitman

Dark, Men, Squares

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

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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.

Walt Whitman

Individuality, Conformity, Institutions

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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.

Walt Whitman

Beautiful, Daughter, Spring

Walt Whitman, “To The Garden The World”

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Walt Whitman

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Born: May 31, 1819
Died: March 26, 1892
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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