Quotes from Walt Whitman

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life

What doesn't kill you leaves scars, ruins your lungs, dries out all your tears, leaves you lying awake at 4 in the morning wishing you weren't alive.

A simple separate person is not contained between his hat and his boots.

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?

Freedom: to walk free and own no superior

I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

I believe that much unseen is also here.

I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, And I become the other dreamers.

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.

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. Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.

Simplicity is the glory of expression.

Song of Myself I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. 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.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

Song of myself Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd 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 elbow'd earth--rich apple-blossom'd earth! Smile, for your lover comes.

Vivas to those who have fail'd! And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! And to those themselves who sank in the sea! And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes! And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!

To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls. -from Song of the Open Road

The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness, I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times, Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.

I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,   You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you? I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by you...

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.