Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass (1855)

141 Sourced Quotes

View all Walt Whitman Quotes
This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

Walt Whitman
I give you my hand, I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself?

Walt Whitman
What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me, Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill, Scattering if freely forever.

Walt Whitman
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Walt Whitman
Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!

Walt Whitman
I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

Walt Whitman
A word of the faith that never balks,
Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.
It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all,
That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.

Walt Whitman
Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge and of the investigation of the depths of qualities and things.

Walt Whitman
A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking.

Walt Whitman
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots,

Walt Whitman
The sum of all known value and respect, I add up in you, whoever you are.

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

Walt Whitman
Of two simple men I saw today on the pier in the midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends, the one to remain hung on the other's neck and passionately kissed him. While the one to depart tightly pressed the one to remain in his arms.

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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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