Walt Whitman - Life Quotes

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The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,
Now voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.

Walt Whitman
And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.... And as to you corpse, I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips — I reach to the polished breasts of melons. And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

Walt Whitman
The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss... it is inevitable as life.

Walt Whitman
Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will measure myself by them. And now touch'd with the lives of other globes arrived as far long as those of the earth or waiting to arrive, or pass'd on farther than those of the earth, I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life.

Walt Whitman
We consider bibles and religions divine I do not say they are not divine. I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still. It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life.

Walt Whitman
Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death, it is form, union, plan, it is eternal life, it is happiness.

Walt Whitman
I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed;
I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.

Walt Whitman
I said: "Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!" He was hilarious: "That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life."

Walt Whitman
Praised be the fathomless universe
For life and joy and for objects and knowledge curious;
And for love, sweet love—But praise! O praise and praise
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.

Walt Whitman
Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in America, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-school for making first-class men. It is life's gymnasium.

Walt Whitman
By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.

Walt Whitman
The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman
Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between people, and their beliefs - in religion, literature, colleges and schools- democracy in all public and private life...

Walt Whitman
What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Walt Whitman
Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams, Now I wash the gum from your eyes, You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life

Walt Whitman
The perfect judge fears nothing—he could go front to front before God, Before the perfect judge all shall stand back—life and death shall stand back—heaven and hell shall stand back.

Walt Whitman
What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

Walt Whitman