Quotes from Walt Whitman

The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations, Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events; These come to me days and nights and go from me again, But they are not the Me myself.

I too am not a bit tamed . . . . I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Easter will soon be here. Life breaks into beauty again and we realize that man may bring hell itself into the world, but that Nature ever patiently waits to be his natural paradise.

There is hardly a more admirable impulse in the human soul than patriotism.

And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

Is this ten a touch? Quivering me to a new identity

Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither, Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me, Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess'd soul, eludes not, One's-self must never give way—that is the final substance— that out of all is sure, Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains? When shows break up what but One's-Self is sure?

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body And the body not more than the soul And nothing, not God is greater to one than one's self is And he who walks a furlong without sympathy Walks to is own funeral drest in shroud

Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, / Disorderly fleshy and sensual....eating drinking and breeding, / No sentimentalist....no stander above men and women or apart / from them....no more modest than immodest.

THIS DUST WAS ONCE THE MAN. This dust was once the man, Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand, Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, Was saved the Union of these States.

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, / And accrue what I hear into myself....and let sounds contribute / toward me.

Love, that is the pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang […] No other theme but love—knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love. — Walt Whitman, from "The Mystic Trumpeter", Leaves of Grass (Simon Schuster, August 1st 2006) Originally published July 4th 1855.

Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity

I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me? I follow you whoever you are from the present hour, My words itch at your ears till you understand them.

Wonderful to depart! Wonderful to be here! The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood! To breathe the air, how delicious! To speak—to walk—to seize something by the hand! To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color'd flesh! To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large! To be this incredible God I am! To have gone forth among other Gods, these men and women I love. - from Song at Sunset

There is that in me - I do not know what it is - but I know it is in me

We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion, The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables, The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm, The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here, And this is ocean's poem.

This minute that comes to me over the past Decillions. There is no better than it And now. What behaves well In the past or behaves well To-day is not such a wonder. The wonder is always and Always how there can be A mean man or an infidel.

When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught my life, Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes, We convince by our presence.)

If you see a good deal remarkable in me I see just as much remarkable in you. Why what have you thought of yourself? Is it you then that thought yourself less?

The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual—namely to You.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?