Quotes from Walt Whitman

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

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven.

Resist much, obey little.

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

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

We were together. I forget the rest.

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough

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

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Do anything, but let it produce joy.

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for.

I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.

I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.

Peace is always beautiful.

I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.

Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.

God is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his impossible standards.

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

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you/ That you may be my poem/ I whisper with my lips close to your ear/ I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

The real war will never get in the books.

A man can be a hero in any profession