Quotes By Walt Whitman

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.

The future is no more uncertain than the present.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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.

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.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

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

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?

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.

Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

When I give, I give myself.

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.

There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing endures but personal qualities.

Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Be curious, not judgmental.

Freedom - to walk free and own no superior.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

The real war will never get in the books.

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 may be as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.