Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass (1855)

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

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
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
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
Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her shall I follow.

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

Walt Whitman
I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best!
I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.

Walt Whitman
If there shall be love and content between the father and the son and if the greatness of the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father, there shall be love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science. In the beauty of poems are the tuft and final applause of science.

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

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
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
The universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion.

Walt Whitman
I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, All all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems. Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, Outward and outward and forever outward.

Walt Whitman
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side...The Bending forward and backward of the rowers...

Walt Whitman
But the people are ungrammatical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred.

Walt Whitman
For all these new and evolutionary facts, meanings, purposes, new poetic messages, new forms and expressions, are inevitable.

Walt Whitman
The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

Walt Whitman