Walt Whitman
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Book
The purpose of democracy - supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance - is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failuresCollection: Ignorance
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.Collection: Sweet
O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.Collection: Strong
My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth. I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with themCollection: Determination
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation: The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer, I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.Collection: Night
That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.Collection: Beautiful
O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! My South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!Collection: Blood
Joy, shipmate, joy! (Pleased to my soul at death I cry), Our life is closed, our life begins, The long, long anchorage we leave, The ship is clear at last, she leaps! She swiftly courses from the shore, Joy, shipmate, joy!Collection: Life
Camerado! This is no book; who touches this touches a man.Collection: Reading
All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any, (What is less or more than a touch).Collection: Waiting
To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim - the rocks - the motion of the waves - the ships, with men in them, what stranger miracles are there?Collection: Beach
Now I see that there is no such thing as love unreturn'd. The pay is certain, one way or another.Collection: Love
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate with the theory of the earth.Collection: Earth
I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, "Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country - I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn."Collection: Death
There is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth - but all is truth without exception; And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am, And sing and laugh and deny nothing.Collection: Laughing
As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.Collection: History
The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?Collection: Time
I know I am deathless We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.Collection: Summer
My call is the call of battle- I nourish active rebellion;/ He going with me must go well armed.Collection: Battle
Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I can bear it.Collection: Math
Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams, Now I wash the gum from your eyes, You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your lifeCollection: Dream
O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?Collection: Dead Poets Society
Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death, it is form, union, plan, it is eternal life, it is happiness.Collection: Death
Perhaps the efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages, have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come, essentially the same - to bring people back from their present strayings and sickly abstractions, to the costless, average, divine, original concrete.Collection: Average
Once I passed through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions, Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I Casually met there who detained me for love of me, Day by day and night by night we were together—all else Has long been forgotten by me, I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung To me, Again we wander, we love, we separate again, Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go, I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.Collection: Night
I sing the body that is electric! I celebrate the Self yet to be unveiled!Collection: Self
Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, Be not afraid of my body.Collection: Hands
The Americans, like the English, probably make love worse than any other race.Collection: Race
I refuse putting from me the best that I am.Collection: Refuse
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?Collection: Panic
What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.Collection: Death
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.Collection: Mean
Most works are most beautiful without ornament.Collection: Beauty
I act as the tongue of you, ... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.Collection: Mouths
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections.Collection: Spring
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty, The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes, The gentle soft-born measureless light, The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon, The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.Collection: Stars
You will hardly know who I am or what I meanCollection: Mean
Old age: The estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours into the Great Sea.Collection: Sea
Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves, As souls only understand souls.Collection: Soul
Oh captain my captainCollection: Captains
The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.Collection: Powerful