“Resist much, obey little.”
Walt Whitman14
“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.”
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.”
“There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.”
“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.”
“To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”
“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.”
“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 renew’d; Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined; The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”
“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?”
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”
“In the faces of men and women I see God.”
“And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.”
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes.”
“I accept reality and dare not question it.”
“Out of every fruition of success, no matter what, comes forth something to make a new effort necessary.”
“Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are millions of suns left, You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor look through the eyes of the dead.... nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.”
“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.”
“To have great poets, there must be great audiences.”
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
“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.”
“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
“Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.”
“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?”
“The future is no more uncertain than the present.”
“A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”
“Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.”
“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
“And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.”
“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.”
“Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.”
“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.”
“In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.”
“I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.”
“The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, They scorn the best I can do to relate them.”
“The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.”
“Song of myself Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset--earth of the mountains misty-topt! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! Far-swooping elbow'd earth--rich apple-blossom'd earth! Smile, for your lover comes.”
“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”
“poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you”
“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 the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
“Copulation is no more foul to me than death is.”
“Be curious, not judgmental.”
“He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.”
“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.”
“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 designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, And here you are the mothers' laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. ... 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 the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
“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 no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.”