Walt Whitman quotes:

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.

The future is no more uncertain than the present.

To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.

The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

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.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.

I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?

The beautiful uncut hair of graves.

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.

I accept reality and dare not question it.

Nothing endures but personal qualities.

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

Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.

Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you

not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,The hundred & fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.

Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.[Give me the splendid silent sun]

WE two boys together clinging,One the other never leaving,Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,threatening,Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, onthe turf or the sea-beach dancing,Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feeblenesschasing,Fulfilling our foray.

Of all sad words, of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been.' Let's add this thought, unto this verse: 'It might have been a great deal worse."

Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,Be not afraid of my body."

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

Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others... And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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.

I think I could always live with animals. The more you're around people, the more you love animals.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from, The scent of these armpits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

The work for giants...to serve well the guns!

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.

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.

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.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

People who serve you without love get even behind your back.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

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.)

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.

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man's bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die.

If you done it, it ain't bragging.

We all have great things on our bucket lists like skydiving, seeing the Northern Lights etc, but what about simply falling in love? Isn't that the most amazing thing we can do?

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

So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road.

All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done.

O captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done. The ship has weather'd every wrack The prize we sought is won The port is near, the bells I hear The people all exulting While follow eyes, the steady keel The vessel grim and daring But Heart! Heart! Heart! O the bleeding drops of red Where on the deck my captain lies Fallen cold and dead.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.

Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.

A perfect writer would make words sing, dance, kiss, do the male and female act, bear children, weep, bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do anything that man or woman or the natural powers can do.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.

Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.

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.

A Song of the good green grass! A song no more of the city streets; A song of farms - a song of the soil of fields. A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.

Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.

Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.

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.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

We convince by our presence.

Lo! body and soul!--this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land,--the South And the North in the light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.

Be curious, not judgmental.

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.

O the joy of my spirit - it is uncaged - it darts like lightning!

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

...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.

If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.

I know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I laugh at what you call dissolution, and I know the amplitude of time.

Either define the moment or the moment will define you.

Whoever degrades another degrades me.

I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election.

I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.

This is what you should do; love the Earth and sun and the animals...

Youth, large, lusty, loving -- Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?

Thought Of equality- as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself- as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.

Old age: The estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours into the Great Sea.

Sail Forth- Steer for the deep waters only. Reckless O soul, exploring. I with thee and thou with me. For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared go. And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all.

Simplicity is the glory of expression.

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding; And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.

O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?

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

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

Now understand me well. It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

Out of every fruition of success, no matter what, comes forth something to make a new effort necessary.

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation: The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer, I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.

this is thy hour o soul, thy free flight into the wordless, away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, night, sleep, death and the stars.

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

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.

The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.

Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?

There's a man in the world who is never turned down, whatever he chances to stray; he gets the glad hand in the populous town, or out where the farmers makes hay; he's greeted with pleasure on deserts of sand, and deep in the aisles of the woods; wherever he goes there's a welcoming hand-he's the man who delivers the goods.

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

I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, "Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country - I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn."

Everybody is writing, writing, writing - worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of the scribblers - every damned one of us - were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work.

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines.

There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now; And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions.

A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls.

To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachable of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art.

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...

Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.

The best writing has no lace on its sleeves.

The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less, it comes or it lags behind, It comes from its embowered garden and looks pleasantly on itself and encloses the world.