Quotes from Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman4, americano, uno de los bárbaros, un universo, desordenadamente carnal y sensual... comiendo, bebiendo y engendrando, no soy un sentimental... no estoy por encima de los hombres y mujeres ni vivo aparte de ellos... no más modesto que inmodesto.

The present now and here, America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl, Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing, To-day's eidolons.

The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.

But a cluster containing night's darkness and blood-dripping wounds, And psalms of the dead.

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 coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine

The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power but in his own right, Wicked, rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear, Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak, Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than a wound cuts, First rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo, Preferring scars and faces pitted with smallpox over all latherers and those that keep out the sun.

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.

Among the men and women, the multitude, I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, Acknowledging none else—not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am; Some are baffled—But that one is not—that one knows me. Ah, lover and perfect equal! I meant that you should discover me so, by my faint indirections; And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you.

Although this poetry collection was first published in 1855, when Whitman was 36 years old, the poet spent his whole life revising the poems in several editions.

I dote on myself...there is that lot of me, and all so luscious. Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy.

I wander all night in my vision, Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers...

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,   Nature without check with original energy.

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, None has understood you, but I understand you, None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself, None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you, None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you, I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

Speech is the twin of my vision . . . . it is unequal to measure itself.

Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in America, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-school for making first-class men. It is life's gymnasium, not of good only, but of all. We try often, though we fall back often. A brave delight, fit for freedom's athletes, fills these arenas, and fully satisfies, out of the action in them, irrespective of success.

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

Youth, Day, Old Age and Night 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?

I conn'd old times, I sat studying at the feet of the great masters, Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.

No tengo nada que ver con este sistema, ni siquiera lo necesario para oponerme a él.

Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor, Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics ... The entities of entities, eidólons. Unfix'd yet fix'd, Ever shall be, ever have been and are, Sweeping the present to the infinite future, Eidólons, eidólons, eidólons.

O soul, thou pleasest me—I thee; Sailing these seas, or on the hills, or waking in the night, Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time, and Space, and Death, like waters flowing, Bear me, indeed, as through the regions infinite, Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear—lave me all over; Bathe me, O God, in thee—mounting to thee, I and my soul to range in range of thee. O Thou transcendent, Nameless, the fibre and the breath. from "Passage to India

not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you, you must travel for yourself.