Walt Whitman: Nothing

Walt Whitman was American poet, essayist and journalist. Explore interesting quotes on nothing.

Walt Whitman: 362 quotes46 likes

“And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

“All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

“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.”

“I Think it is lost….. but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost.
The body sluggish, aged, cold, the ember left from earlier fires
shall duly flame again.”

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

“Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.”

Walt Whitman Starting from Paumanok

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

“I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is”

“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

“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”

“I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!”

To think of Time, 9
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I have just this moment heard from the front — there is nothing yet of a movement, but each side is continually on the alert, expecting something to happen.
O Mother, to think that we are to have here soon what I have seen so many times, the awful loads and trains and boatloads of poor, bloody, and pale and wounded young men again — for that is what we certainly will, and before very long. I see all the little signs, getting ready in the hospitals, etc.; it is dreadful when one thinks about it. I sometimes think over the sights I have myself seen: the arrival of the wounded after a battle, and the scenes on the field, too, and I can hardly believe my own recollections. What an awful thing war is! Mother, it seems not men but a lot of devils and butchers butchering each other.”

Letter to his mother (22 March 1864)

“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.”

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