Quotes by Walt Whitman
I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred.
O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.
To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.
The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.
There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.
O lands! O all so dear to me - what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is.
The beautiful uncut hair of graves.
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.
Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.
Nothing endures but personal qualities.
I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.
Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.
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.
Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
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.
Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?
