Quotes About Expression

Man or woman, I might tell you how I like you, but cannot, And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot, And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days. Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give, I give myself.

I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice

Whitman's poems present no trace of rhyme, save in a couple or so of chance instances. Parts of them, indeed, may be regarded as a warp of prose amid the weft of poetry

The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

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.

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

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.

Every existence has its idiom, every thing and idiom and tongue.

The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.

Of all races and eras these States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets

Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.

he can make every word he speaks draw blood

Expression of speech .. in what is written or said forget not that silence is also expressive, That anguish as hot as the hottest and contempt as cold as the coldest may be without words, That the true adoration is likewise without words and without kneeling.

I know perfectly well my own egotism, And know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less, And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue, questioning every one I meet, Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before? Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?

Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing

A great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning.

What living and buried speech is vibrating here... what howls restrained by decorum...

Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached

I pursue you where none else has pursued you; Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed routine; if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me. —Walt Whitman, from "To You," Leaves of Grass (Simon Schuster, August 1st 2006) Originally published July 4th 1855.

Let your barbaric yop be heard through the rooftops!

The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Here is what sings unrestricted faith.

Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body (Leaves of Grass preface)