Walt Whitman Quotes

369 Sourced Quotes

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman.

Walt Whitman
How beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.

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

Walt Whitman
I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes - but is that all?

Walt Whitman
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.

Walt Whitman
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman
Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.

Walt Whitman
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman
The Americans, like the English, probably make love worse than any other race.

Walt Whitman
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons.

Walt Whitman
I act as the tongue of you,... tied in your mouth.... in mine it begins to be loosened.

Walt Whitman
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.

Walt Whitman
The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

Walt Whitman
What beauty there is in words; what a lurking curious charm in the sound some words.

Walt Whitman
It [Democracy] is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.

Walt Whitman
Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)

Walt Whitman
What do you suppose will satisfy the soul except to walk free and own no superior?

Walt Whitman
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

Walt Whitman
Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness of heart than at present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us.

Walt Whitman
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuffed with the stuff that is course, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine...

Walt Whitman
Those things most listened for, certainly those are the things least said.

Walt Whitman
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight.

Walt Whitman
Loafe with me on the grass—loose the stop from your throat; Not words, not music or rhyme I want—not custom or lecture, not even the best; Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

Walt Whitman
Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and rested, Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips.

Walt Whitman
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.

Walt Whitman
Sail Forth- Steer for the deep waters only. Reckless O soul, exploring. I with thee and thou with me. For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared go. And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all.

Walt Whitman
Such was the war. It was not a quadrille in a ballroom. Its interior history will not only never be written—its practicality, minutiae of deeds and passions, will never even be suggested.

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

Walt Whitman
This dust was once the man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
Was saved the Union of these States.

Walt Whitman
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.

Walt Whitman