Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass (1855)

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

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

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
My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth. I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them

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
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
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
When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, My breath will not be obedient to its organs, I become a dumb man.

Walt Whitman
Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity.

Walt Whitman
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.

Walt Whitman
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

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
Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.

Walt Whitman
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!

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

Walt Whitman
An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation.

Walt Whitman
Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Walt Whitman
Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Walt Whitman
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.

Walt Whitman
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God.

Walt Whitman
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.

Walt Whitman
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery here we stand.

Walt Whitman
O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.

Walt Whitman
Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves, As souls only understand souls.

Walt Whitman
Long and long has the grass been growing,
Long and long has the rain been falling,
Long has the globe been rolling round.

Walt Whitman
Each belongs here or anywhere as much as the well off…just as much as you or I. Each has his or her place in the procession.

Walt Whitman
Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing, I tread day and night such roads.

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 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