Walt Whitman
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.Collection: Drinking
I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware, I sit content, And if each and all be aware, I sit content.Collection: Acceptance
I like the scientific spirit-the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine-it always keeps the way beyond open.Collection: Science
I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.Collection: Self Esteem
I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.Collection: Ocean
God is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his impossible standards.Collection: Children
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?Collection: Body
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people.Collection: Nature
You have not known what you are - you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life; Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return? The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk.Collection: Prayer
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.Collection: Nature
Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between people, and their beliefs - in religion, literature, colleges and schools- democracy in all public and private life.Collection: Party
All is procession; the universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion.Collection: Beautiful
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!Collection: Giving
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.Collection: Men
I am too not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.Collection: Sound
I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.Collection: Time
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.Collection: Art
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough, To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then? I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.Collection: Beautiful
I inhale great draught of space...the east and west are mine...and the north and south are mine...I am grandeur than I thought...I did not know i held so much goodness.Collection: Space
Love, that is day and night - love, that is sun and moon and stars, Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume, no other words but words of love, no other thought but love.Collection: Life
A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing lacking.Collection: Women
Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.Collection: Inspirational
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 turn'd to beautiful results, And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death, And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any.Collection: Beautiful
I Think it is lost.....but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost . The body sluggish, aged, cold, the ember left from earlier fires shall duly flame again.Collection: Thinking
But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?Collection: Long Ago
Thought Of equality- as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself- as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.Collection: Equality
Day by day and night by night we were together - all else has long been forgotten by me.Collection: Love
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.Collection: Looks
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.Collection: Miracle
Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.Collection: Grieving
You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin , or even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.Collection: Nature
I love doctors and hate their medicine.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Dance
Americans should know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.Collection: Soul
The moon gives you light, and the bugles and the drums give you music, and my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, my heart gives you love.Collection: Heart
If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.Collection: Death
I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.Collection: Years
In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed of perfection.Collection: Heart
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space.Collection: Ocean
I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.Collection: Softball
Something there is more immortal even than the stars.Collection: Stars
So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road.Collection: Book
When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand, … Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further, I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave, But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.Collection: Hands
I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from, The scent of these armpits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.Collection: Prayer
O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Individuality
What beauty there is in words; what a lurking curious charm in the sound some words.Collection: Beauty
...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.Collection: Simple