Walt Whitman Quotes & Sayings

#1. I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy

#2. Have you not learned the most in your life from those with whom you disagreed - those who saw it differently from you?

Walt Whitman

#3. It is that something in the soul which says, - Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere; master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, master of nature and passion and death, and of all terror and all pain.

Walt Whitman

#4. Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

Walt Whitman

#5. So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road.

Walt Whitman

#6. What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent,
My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait,
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

Walt Whitman

#7. To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim - the rocks - the motion of the waves - the ships, with men in them, what stranger miracles are there?

Walt Whitman

#8. Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.

Walt Whitman

#9. Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents, Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising, See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.

Walt Whitman

#10. Thunder on! Stride on! Democracy. Strike with vengeful stroke!

Walt Whitman

#11. The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them

Walt Whitman

#12. My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth.
I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands,
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them

Walt Whitman

#13. It is only the novice in political economy who thinks it is the duty of government to make its citizens happy - government has no such office.

Walt Whitman

#14. What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me, Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill, Scattering if freely forever.

Walt Whitman

#15. To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

Walt Whitman

#16. The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the musical rain,

Walt Whitman

#17. I am satisfied ... I see, dance, laugh, sing.

Walt Whitman

#18. I do not doubt but the majest and beauty of the world are latent
in any iota of the world;
I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects,
vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse than
I have supposed.

Walt Whitman

#19. I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric product
And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.

Walt Whitman

#20. Thought
Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;
As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly
affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who
do not believe in men.

Walt Whitman

#21. 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.

Walt Whitman

#22. I know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I laugh at what you call dissolution, and I know the amplitude of time.

Walt Whitman

#23. Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,
Be not afraid of my body.

Walt Whitman

#24. A perfect writer would make words sing, dance, kiss, do the male and female act, bear children, weep, bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do anything that man or woman or the natural powers can do.

Walt Whitman

#25. 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.

Walt Whitman

#26. The greatest poet does not moralize or make applications of morals ... he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons but its own.

Walt Whitman

#27. I do not call one greater and one smaller, that which fills it period and place is equal to any.

Walt Whitman

#28. I hate commas in the wrong places.

Walt Whitman

#29. Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep for the dead I loved so well.

Walt Whitman

#30. Soothe! soothe! soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,
But my love soothes not me, not me."
-from "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

Walt Whitman

#31. We were together. I forget the rest.

Walt Whitman

#32. Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

Walt Whitman

#33. I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name ...

Walt Whitman

#34. is that the President? Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep,

Walt Whitman

#35. 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

#36. When one reaches out to help another he touches the face of God.

Walt Whitman

#37. Great is Youth
equally great is Old Age
great are Day and Night.
Great is Wealth
great is Poverty
great is Expression-great is Silence.

Walt Whitman

#38. 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.

Walt Whitman

#39. The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

Walt Whitman

#40. Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by regular contact with outdoor growths - animals, trees, sun warmth and free skies - or it will dwindle and pale.

Walt Whitman

#41. Produce great men, the rest follows.

Walt Whitman

#42. Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death.

Walt Whitman

#43. O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Walt Whitman

#44. In the faces of men and women, I see God.

Walt Whitman

#45. And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality ... it is idle to try to alarm me

Walt Whitman

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

Walt Whitman

#47. Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.

Walt Whitman

#48. Long have you timidly waded
Holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea,
Rise again, nod to me, shout,
And laughingly dash with your hair.

Walt Whitman

#49. A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity; but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman.

Walt Whitman

#50. Vivas to those who have fail'd!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!

Walt Whitman

#51. The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.

Walt Whitman

#52. It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess.

Walt Whitman

#53. I do not say these things for a dollar, or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat;

Walt Whitman

#54. Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.

Walt Whitman

#55. 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.

Walt Whitman

#56. All the past we leave behind; We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world, Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O Pioneers!

Walt Whitman

#57. Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or whether with freedom.

Walt Whitman

#58. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from; The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer, This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.

Walt Whitman

#59. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

Walt Whitman

#60. Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;

Walt Whitman

#61. And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.

Walt Whitman

#62. But the people are ungrammatical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred.

Walt Whitman

#63. I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, judges and generals, unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a thousand years.

Walt Whitman

#64. Where are your combing seas, your blue water, your rollers, your breakers, your whales, or your waterspouts, and your endless motion, in this bit of a forest, child?

Walt Whitman

#65. When the materials are ready, the architects shall appear.

Walt Whitman

#66. The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.

Walt Whitman

#67. He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher."
-from "Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

#68. I am large, I contain multitudes

Walt Whitman

#69. the old name absorbs into me - MANNAHATTA, "the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.

Walt Whitman

#70. WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over;
I stand apart to hear - it never tires me.
To you, your name also;
Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name?

Walt Whitman

#71. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.

Walt Whitman

#72. The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Walt Whitman

#73. Now, dearest comrade, lift me to your face,
We must separate awhileHere! take from my lips this kiss.
Whoever you are, I give it especially to you;
So long!And I hope we shall meet again.

Walt Whitman

#74. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you/ That you may be my poem/ I whisper with my lips close to your ear/ I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

Walt Whitman

#75. The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

Walt Whitman

#76. 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?

Walt Whitman

#77. 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

#78. Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

Walt Whitman

#79. When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, My breath will not be obedient to its organs, I become a dumb man.

Walt Whitman

#80. I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

Walt Whitman

#81. I think I could always live with animals. The more you're around people, the more you love animals.

Walt Whitman

#82. The souls moving along ... are they invisible while the least atom of the stones is visible?

Walt Whitman

#83. This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

Walt Whitman

#84. All music is is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments.

Walt Whitman

#85. As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.

Walt Whitman

#86. I sing the body that is electric! I celebrate the Self yet to be unveiled!

Walt Whitman

#87. Resist much, obey little.

Walt Whitman

#88. Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!
Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head and slumbers
and dreams and gaping,
I discover myself on the verge of the usual mistake.

Walt Whitman

#89. And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the other.

Walt Whitman

#90. I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems; And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality, For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul, and of immortality.

Walt Whitman

#91. If you done it, it ain't bragging.

Walt Whitman

#92. Slang, too, is the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently chrystallize.

Walt Whitman

#93. The sum of all known value and respect, I add up in you, whoever you are.

Walt Whitman

#94. To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachable of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art.

Walt Whitman

#95. 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