Walt Whitman Quotes

369 Sourced Quotes

The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.

Walt Whitman
The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow, the silent, cyclic chemistry, The slow and steady ages plodding, the unoccupied surface ripening, the rich ores forming beneath.

Walt Whitman
More and more too, the old name absorbs into me. Mannahatta, 'the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.' How fit a name for America's great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!

Walt Whitman
My ties and ballasts leave me - I travel - I sail - My elbows rest in the sea-gaps. I skirt the sierras. My palms cover continents - I am afoot with my vision.

Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose.

Walt Whitman
The President eats dirt and excrement for his daily meals, likes it and tries to force it on The States.

Walt Whitman
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate with the theory of the earth.

Walt Whitman
Camden was originally an accident, but I shall never be sorry I was left over in Camden. It has brought me blessed returns.

Walt Whitman
The moon gives you light, and the bugles and the drums give you music, and my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, my heart gives you love.

Walt Whitman
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?

Walt Whitman
Day by day and night by night we were together - all else has long been forgotten by me.

Walt Whitman
All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments. It is not the violins and the cornets-it is not the oboe nor the beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza-nor that of the women's chorus; it is nearer and farther than they.

Walt Whitman
The past, the future, majesty, love - if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

Walt Whitman
With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons. 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. I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

Walt Whitman
Wisdom is not finally tested in 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, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Walt Whitman
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.

Walt Whitman
Why who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know nothing else but miracles, whether they be animals feeding in the fields, Or, birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; These, with the rest, one and all, are to me, miracles.

Walt Whitman
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here, I believe much unseen is also here

Walt Whitman
Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world - a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious - surely never again to set.

Walt Whitman
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections.

Walt Whitman
Human bodies are words, myriads of words, (In the best poems re-appears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay, Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)

Walt Whitman
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.

Walt Whitman
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.

Walt Whitman
I am an acme of things accomplished, and I am an encloser of things to be.

Walt Whitman
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.

Walt Whitman
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him - it cannot fail

Walt Whitman
O lands! O all so dear to me - what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is.

Walt Whitman
The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework.

Walt Whitman
An electric chain seems to vibrate, as it were, between our brain and him or her preserved there [in a Daguerreotype] so well by the limner's cunning. Time, space, both are annihilated, and we identify the semblance with the reality.

Walt Whitman
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

Walt Whitman