Walt Whitman
There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became.Collection: Children
When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.Collection: Time
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.Collection: Space
The sum of all known value and respect, I add up in you, whoever you are.Collection: Add
O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done, / The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is wonCollection: Sailing
I henceforth tread the world, chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower.Collection: World
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.Collection: Summer
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots.Collection: Dying
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!Collection: Beautiful
And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.... And as to you corpse, I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips — I reach to the polished breasts of melons. And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.Collection: Death
Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.Collection: Government
Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death.Collection: Death
Now I will do nothing but listen to accrue what I hear into this song. To let sounds contribute toward it. I hear the sound I love. The sound of the human voice. I hear all sounds running together.Collection: Running
Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs.Collection: Liberty
I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.Collection: Everyday
I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!Collection: Thinking
I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is.Collection: Self
In all people I see myself - none more, and not one a barleycorn less; And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them.Collection: People
I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.Collection: Stars
The city sleeps and the country sleeps, the living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, the old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; and these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, and such as it is to be of these more or less I am, and of these one and all I weave the song of myself.Collection: Country
O lands! O all so dear to me - what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is.Collection: Land
A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking.Collection: Sexy
The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.Collection: Wise
For all these new and evolutionary facts, meanings, purposes, new poetic messages, new forms and expressions, are inevitable.Collection: Expression
All the past we leave behind; We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world, Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O Pioneers!Collection: Strong
Youth, large, lusty, loving -- Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?Collection: Time
Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?Collection: New York
TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little, Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-ward resumes its liberty.Collection: Cities
Have you not learned the most in your life from those with whom you disagreed - those who saw it differently from you?Collection: Saws
We consider bibles and religions divine I do not say they are not divine. I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still. It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life.Collection: Giving
O America! Because you build for mankind I build for you.Collection: Military
When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, My breath will not be obedient to its organs, I become a dumb man.Collection: Men
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again and ever again, this soiled world.Collection: Death
And as to me, I know nothing else but miraclesCollection: Miracle
Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.Collection: Battle
O amazement of things-even the least particle!Collection: Science
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.Collection: Horse
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.Collection: America
I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election.Collection: Exercise
And I or you pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth.Collection: Dimes
Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or whether with freedom.Collection: Men
If there were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with, it is enough to send him with his wreath to the memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day, bitterer than gall - indeed a crucifixion day - that it did not conquer him - that he unflinchingly stemmed it, and resolved to lift himself and the Union out of it.Collection: Memories
Everybody is writing, writing, writing - worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of the scribblers - every damned one of us - were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Encouragement
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.Collection: Art
And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future, And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turned to beautiful results.Collection: Beautiful
THIS dust was once the Man, / Gentle, plain, just and resolute—under whose cautious hand, / Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, / Was saved the Union of These States.Collection: Men