Walt Whitman Quotes page 2

“To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean”

“I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.”

“I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“I accept Time absolutely.
It alone is without flaw,
It alone rounds and completes all,
That mystic baffling wonder.”

“This hour I tell things in confidence/ I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“it makes such differenceyou read”

“I will You, in all, Myself, with promise to never desert you,
To which I sign my name.”

“There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“I and this mystery, here we stand.”

“I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell”

Source: Song of Myself

“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?”

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

“But where is what I started for so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.”

Walt Whitman Starting from Paumanok

Starting from Paumanok. 12
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Loafe with me on the grass—loose the stop from your throat;
Not words, not music or rhyme I want—not custom or lecture, not even the best;
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.”

“The road to wisdom is paved with excess.

The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.”

“The question, O me! so sad, recurring -
What good amid these, O me, O life?
That you are here - that life
exists and identity,
that the powerful play goes on,
and you may contribute a verse.”

Variant: Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.
Source: Leaves of Grass

“O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you;
As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,
Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.”

Source: The Leaves of Grass

“Long have you timidly waded
Holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea,
Rise again, nod to me, shout,
And laughingly dash with your hair.”

Source: Song of Myself

“Oh captain my captain”

“Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard."

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“Clear and sweet is my soul, clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.”

Source: The Complete Poems

“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.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again / I am to see to it that I do not lose you”

“The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.”

“To have great poets,
there must be great audiences.”

“Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”

“Agonies are one of my changes of garments.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, when I give I give myself.”

Source: Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition

“The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung.”

“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.”

“Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.”

Source: Song of Myself

“TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-ward resumes its liberty.”

“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.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable.”

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

Source: Song of Myself

“I refuse putting from me the best that I am.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,
As souls only understand souls.”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
(What is less or more than a touch)…”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.”

“This is the city, and I am one of the citizens/Whatever interests the rest interests me”

“A blade of grass is the journeywork of the stars”

“The sum of all known value and respect, I add up in you, whoever you are.”

Variant: I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Source: Leaves of Grass

“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”

Source: Leaves of Grass

“I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.”