Quotes from Walt Whitman

You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and water-craft; a certain free margin, and even vagueness—perhaps ignorance, credulity—helps your enjoyment of these things, and of the sentiment of feather'd, wooded, river, or marine Nature generally.

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.

I am she who adorn'd herself and folded her hair expectantly,My truant lover has come, and it is dark.

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

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.

There was a child went forth every day,And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became.

And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God, For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God, No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God, and about death. I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least...

A batter'd, wreck'd old man,Thrown on this savage shore, far from home,Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death,I take my way along the island's edge,Venting a heavy heart.

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul.

The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud,These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and rested,Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips.

Words! book-words! what are you?

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river.

And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheefully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait... And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

Answer That you are here---that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Do I contradict myself Very well then I contradict myself,

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

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

My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me, I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof in my face, With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

Nothing endures but personal qualities.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons.

Press close bare-bosomed night -- press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds! night of the large few stars! Still nodding night! mad naked summer night.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love.

The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.