"A child said 'What is the grass?' fetching it to me with full hands, How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopefull green stuff woven. . . . Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. . . . Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, . . . And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"A great city is that which has the greatest men and women."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices, Which, bawled by boys from mile to mile, Spreads its curious opinion To a million merciful and sneering men"
― from a poem by Stephen Maria Crane (1871 to 1900)
"After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on ― have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear ― what remains? Nature remains."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"And your very flesh shall be a great poem."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Be curious, not judgmental."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Beauty. Dionysus the drunk boy on a panther ― rank adolescent sweat ― Pan goatman slogs through the solid earth up to his waist as if it were the sea, his skin crusted with moss & lichen ― Eros multiplies himself into a dozen pastoral naked Iowa farm boys with muddy feet & pond-scum on their thighs."
― Hakim Bey, Peter Lamborn Wilson, (born 1945) in the Paganism section of Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism
"Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"But wait ― O my Goddess ― she's here, returned on her own to my eyes! (What a happening this is) 'It's her in the flesh!' I rejoyce; I am glad; I'm enlarged with delight! And just look at those musclemen congregate, bowing and scraping, flexing their biceps, bulging with love of her."
― from an Ægyptian Love Poem translated as Now I shall kneel, praising the Golden Girl, by an unknown (probable New Kingdom) Ægyptian author, as translated by John Lawrence Foster (born 1951(?)) in Love Songs of the New Kingdom
"Camerado, I give you my hand, I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself?"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave, Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned."
― Edna Saint Vincent Millay, Dirge Without Music
"Every moment of light and dark is a miracle."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Freedom ― to walk free and own no superior."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I accept reality and dare not question it."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I celebrate myself, and sing myself."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease . . . observing a spear of summer grass."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I exist as I am, that is enough."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I have learned that to be with those I like is enough."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes ― but is that all?"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I know not how such things can be! ― I breathed my soul back into me. Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I, and hailed the earth with such a cry, as is not heard save from a man who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky, . . . "
― from Renascence by Edna Saint Vincent Millay (1892 to 1950)
"I may be as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's."
― William Blake (1757 to 1827)
"I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"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."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"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."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"I was simply off to see Nefrus my friend, Just to sit and chat at her place (about men). When there, hot on his horses, comes Mehy (Oh god, I said to myself, it's Mehy!) Right over the crest of the road, wheeling along with the boys."
― from an Ægyptian Love Poem translated as I Was Simply Off to See Nefrus My Friend, by an unknown (probable New Kingdom) Ægyptian author, as translated by John Lawrence Foster (born 1951(?)) in Love Songs of the New Kingdom
"If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. "
― William Blake (1757 to 1827)
"If you done it, it ain't bragging."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Keep your face always toward the sunshine ― and shadows will fall behind you."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Love seeketh not Itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives it ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
― William Blake (1757 to 1827)
"My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - It gives a lovely light."
― First Fig by Edna Saint Vincent Millay (1882 to 1950)
"No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings."
― William Blake (1757 to 1827)
"Nothing can happen more beautiful than death."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Nothing endures but personal qualities."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"O lands! O all so dear to me ― what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions, Yet now of all that city I remember only a man I casually met there who detain'd me for love of me, Day by day and night by night we were together ― all else has long been forgotten by me, I remember I say only that man who passionately clung to me, Again we wander, we love, we separate again, Again he holds me by the hand, I must not go, I see him close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"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."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Probable-Possible, my black hen, She lays eggs in the Relative When. She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now, Because she's unable to Postulate How."
― from the Space Child's Mother Goose by Frederick Winsor
"Produce great men, the rest follows."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Re-examine all that you have been told . . . dismiss that which insults your soul."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Simplicity is the glory of expression."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The future is no more uncertain than the present."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account, That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The real war will never get in the books."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"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."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The sky, I said, must somewhere stop, and ― sure enough! ― I see the top! The sky, I thought, is not so grand; I 'most could touch it with my hand! And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky. I screamed, and ― lo! ― Infinity came down and settled over me; forced back my scream into my chest, bent back my arm upon my breast, and, pressing of the Undefined the definition on my mind,"
― from Renascence by Edna Saint Vincent Millay (1892 to 1950)
"The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"The worst and best are both inclined, to snap like vixens at the truth. But, O beware the middle mind, that purrs and nevers shows a tooth!"
― from Nonsense Rhyme by Elinor Wylie (1885 to 1928) in her collection Angels and Earthly Creatures
"There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"There was a child went forth every day; And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became; And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"This is the Space Child with Brow Serene, who pushed the Button to Start the Machine, that made with the Cybernetics and Stuff, without Confusion, exposing the Bluff, that hung on the Turn of a Plausible Phrase, and, shredding the Erudite Verbal Haze ― Cloaking Constant K ― Wrecked the Summary ― Based on the Mummery ― Hiding the Flaw ― And Demolished the Theory Jack built."
― from the Space Child's Mother Goose by Frederick Winsor
"This is my rock, and here I run to steal the secret of the sun."
― from the poem This is My Rock by David Thompson Watson McCord
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, 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."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache; do be my enemy--for friendship's sake."
― William Blake (1757 to 1827)
"To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"To have great poets, there must be great audiences."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, rains from the sky a meteoric shower of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill is daily spun; but there exists no loom to weave it into fabric."
― Edna Saint Vincent Millay (1882 to 1950)
"Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead? And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"We convince by our presence."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"We two boys together clinging One the other never leaving Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making, Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching, Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving, No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening, Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing, Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing, Fulfilling our foray."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"What a devil art thou, Poverty! How many desires ― how many aspirations after goodness and truth ― how many noble thoughts, loving wishes toward our fellows, beautiful imaginings thou hast crushed under thy heel, without remorse or pause!"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Whatever satisfies the soul is truth."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"When I give I give myself."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"When I wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise, And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy, O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well,"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892), from Calamus
"Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
""Whoever you are, motion and reflection are especially for you, The divine ship sails the divine sea for you. . . . I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete, The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?"
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
"You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness ― ignorance, credulity ― helps your enjoyment of these things."
― Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892)
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