Walt Whitman: Doing

Walt Whitman was American poet, essayist and journalist. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Walt Whitman: 362   quotes 41   likes

“Do anything, but let it produce joy.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Positive , Joy

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

Walt Whitman Song of Myself

Source: Song of Myself

Feeling , Personality

“I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or
wake at night alone,
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.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Thinking , Waiting , Night

“A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls.”

Walt Whitman
Men , Soul

“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.”

Walt Whitman Song of Myself

Source: Song of Myself

Grass

“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.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Thinking , Time

“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)…”

Walt Whitman
Truth , Waiting

“Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force, fascination!
Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?”

Walt Whitman

Youth, Day, Old Age and Night
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Youth , Age

“What do you suppose will satisfy the soul except to walk free and own no superior?”

Walt Whitman

Laws for Creations
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Soul

“I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, "Do not weep for me,
This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country—I now go back there,
I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn."”

Walt Whitman

Salut au Monde, 6
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

People , Country

“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.... The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured.... others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches.... and shall master all attachment.”

Walt Whitman

From the Preface to the 1855 edition of <i>Leaves of Grass</i>

School , Family , God , Soul