Quotes by Walt Whitman
Judging from the main portion of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven.
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.
I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value,
The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.
The female that loves unrequited sleeps, And the male that loves unrequited sleeps, The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps, And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all sleep.
Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars,...
Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,) To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,
My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me, I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof in my face, With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.
The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.
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?
...The city fireman-the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-pack'd square, The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring, The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water, The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets-the bringing to bear of the hooks and ladders, and their execution, The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors, if the fire smoulders under them, The crowd with their lit faces, watching-the glare and dense shadows;....
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!)
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the...
I cease my song for thee, From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,...
What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the words I have read in my life.
Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, Those burial clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,...
Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory,...
That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul,...
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love.
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
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird. ...
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.
