Walt Whitman: Quotes about life

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

“What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”

Walt Whitman

Variant: What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the words I have read in my life.

Life , Reading

“Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light
and of every moment of your life”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Life , Dreams , Light

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

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

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

Life

“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.”

Walt Whitman

Source: The Leaves of Grass

Life , Sadness , Question

“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
Life

“And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, / No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.”

Walt Whitman Song of Myself

Source: Song of Myself

Life , Death , Time

“I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed;
I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.”

Walt Whitman

So Long!
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life , Nature

“Praised be the fathomless universe
For life and joy and for objects and knowledge curious;
And for love, sweet love—But praise! O praise and praise
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.”

Walt Whitman

Memories of President Lincoln, 14
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Life , Death , Knowledge

“I said: "Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!" He was hilarious: "That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life."”

Walt Whitman

Conversation with Whitman (4 July 1889) as quoted in With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906) by Horace Traubel, Vol. IV <!-- p. 508 -->

Life , Law , Beauty , Game

“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