Walt Whitman

“Resist much, obey little.”

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

“Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.”

“In the faces of men and women I see God and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is signed by God's name, and I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoever I go others will punctually come for ever and ever.”

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.”

“Peace is always beautiful.”

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

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

“There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.”

“O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever re...”

“In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.”

“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me. The long brown path before me leading me wherever I choose. Henceforth, I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune. Henceforth, I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing.”

“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.”

“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?”

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

“Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious—surely never again to set. But against it, de...”

“When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountabl...”

“I believe in the flesh and the appetites; Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from; The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer; This head more than churches, bibles, and...”

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

“We convince by our presence.”

“Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)”

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean But I shall be good health to you nonetheless And filter and fibre your blood.”

“Copulation is no more foul to me than death is.”

“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.”

“Be curious, not judgmental.”

“I accept reality and dare not question it.”

“I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.”

“The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.”

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

“Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.”

“The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.”

“Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.”

“Nothing endures but personal qualities.”

“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”

“I exist as I am, that is enough.”

“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.”

“Produce great men, the rest follows.”

“Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.”

“Freedom - to walk free and own no superior.”

“The beautiful uncut hair of graves.”

“He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.”

“There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.”

“If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred.”

“Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.”

“A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.”

“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”

“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

“A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”

“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?”

“Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.”

“The real war will never get in the books.”

“Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.”

“And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”

“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?”

“Simplicity is the glory of expression.”

“And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.”

“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.”

“The future is no more uncertain than the present.”

“I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness. All seems beautiful to me. Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me; Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.”

“Of Equality--as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.”

“I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.”

“I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”

“If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

“The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, They scorn the best I can do to relate them.”

“What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd t...”

“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 hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer...”

“When I give I give 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.”

“For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!”

“re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and 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...”

“This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best. Night, sleep, and the stars.”