Quotes by Walt Whitman

• He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
• I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
• I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.
• I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
• I accept reality and dare not question it.
• I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.
• Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.
• Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?
• I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.
• Freedom - to walk free and own no superior.
• Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.
• 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.
• Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.
• Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?
• Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
• And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
• The future is no more uncertain than the present.
• The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
• The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.
• The beautiful uncut hair of graves.
• The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.
• Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?
• The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
• Simplicity is the glory of expression.
• Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
• Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.
• Produce great men, the rest follows.
• Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.
• 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.
• I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.
• The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
• There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
• To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
• To have great poets, there must be great audiences.
• To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.
• To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.
• The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.
• We convince by our presence.
• Nothing endures but personal qualities.
• When I give, I give myself.
• There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.
• The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
• The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.
• The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
• The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.
• The real war will never get in the books.
• 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.
• I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.
• O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.
• Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.
• If you done it, it ain't bragging.
• A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.
• A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
• After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.
• Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.
• If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred.
• Be curious, not judgmental.
• There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.
• 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.
• I may be as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
• I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes - but is that all?
• I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.
• I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
• I exist as I am, that is enough.
• All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.
• And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
• And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
• And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.
• Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
• Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
• Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
• Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.
• I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
• Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.
• Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
• In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.
• Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.
• Keep your face always towards the sunshine, and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always toward the sunshine, and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always towards the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always towards the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always toward the sun, and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always toward the sunshine, and shadows will fall behind you
• Keep your face always to the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always toward the sunshine- and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always toward the sunshine—and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always toward the sunshine- and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you
• Always keep your face toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always towards the sun, and the shadows will fall behind you.
• Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.