Walt Whitman Quotations | Page 3

And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles

I am an acme of things accomplished, and I am an encloser of things to be.

O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!

There is no God any more divine than Yourself.

Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.

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

I am large, I contain multitudes

I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.

I refuse putting from me the best that I am.

Peace is always beautiful.

I sing the body electric.

All truths wait in all things.

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

This is what you should do; love the Earth and sun and the animals...

When I give, I give myself.

I give you my hand, I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself?

Where the earth is, we are.

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

Day by day and night by night we were together - all else has long been forgotten by me.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.

I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

You have not known what you are--you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life; Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return? The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;

Sail Forth- Steer for the deep waters only. Reckless O soul, exploring. I with thee and thou with me. For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared go. And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all.

Why who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know nothing else but miracles, whether they be animals feeding in the fields, Or, birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; These, with the rest, one and all, are to me, miracles.

Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections.

I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, with many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle - and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I break.

I dreamed in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dreamed that was the new City of Friends; Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest; It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.

Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation: The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer, I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.

O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.

Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her shall I follow.

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

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

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

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?

Something there is more immortal even than the stars.

Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,and dismiss whatever insults your own soul... It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women. The master knows that he is unspeakably great and that all are unspeakably great. There will soon be no more priests... They may wait awhile, perhaps a generation or two, dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place.A new order shall arise and they shall be the priests of man,and every man shall be his own priest.

O the joy of my spirit - it is uncaged - it darts like lightning!

Americans should know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.

I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best! I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.

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.

Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality.

If there were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with, it is enough to send him with his wreath to the memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day, bitterer than gall - indeed a crucifixion day - that it did not conquer him - that he unflinchingly stemmed it, and resolved to lift himself and the Union out of it.

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.

Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth ever afterward resumes its liberty.

What has miserable, inefficient Mexico...to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?

I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, All all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems. Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, Outward and outward and forever outward.

Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last, In things best known to you, finding the best, or as good as the best, In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest; Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place-not for another hour, but this hour.

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

For all these new and evolutionary facts, meanings, purposes, new poetic messages, new forms and expressions, are inevitable.

I dote on myself. There is a lot of me and all so luscious.

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side...The Bending forward and backward of the rowers...

Over all the sky - the sky! Far, far out of reach, studded with eternal stars.

We consider bibles and religions divine I do not say they are not divine. I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still. It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life.

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

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love.

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men-I saw them; I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war; But I saw they were not as was thought; They themselves were fully at rest-they suffer'd not; The living remain'd and suffer'd-the mother suffer'd, And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffer'd, And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.

Camerado! This is no book; who touches this touches a man.

The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.

Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.

There's no doubt that I've deserved my enemies, but I don't think I've deserved my friends.

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

My ties and ballasts leave me - I travel - I sail - My elbows rest in the sea-gaps. I skirt the sierras. My palms cover continents - I am afoot with my vision.

O joy of suffering! To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!

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

A man can be a hero in any profession

I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul ...

The past, the future, majesty, love - if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

An electric chain seems to vibrate, as it were, between our brain and him or her preserved there [in a Daguerreotype] so well by the limner's cunning. Time, space, both are annihilated, and we identify the semblance with the reality.

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.

The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less, it comes or it lags behind, It comes from its embowered garden and looks pleasantly on itself and encloses the world.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine everything could be worse but isn't and so we are justified in being grateful - and shadows everything could be better but isn't and so it is easy to be bitter 'unless you decide to look on the bright side will fall behind you.

We all have great things on our bucket lists like skydiving, seeing the Northern Lights etc, but what about simply falling in love? Isn't that the most amazing thing we can do?

I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.

Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are, Buds to be unfolded on the old terms; If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color, perfume, to you; If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall blanches and trees.

All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments. It is not the violins and the cornets-it is not the oboe nor the beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza-nor that of the women's chorus; it is nearer and farther than they.

There was a child went forth everyday, And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or dread, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day... or for many years or stretching cycles of years...

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!

By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.

Strong and content I travel the open road.

There will never be any more perfection than there is now.

I do not seek good fortune - I am good fortune!

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.

You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here, I believe much unseen is also here

Now understand me well. It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.

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.

More and more too, the old name absorbs into me. Mannahatta, 'the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.' How fit a name for America's great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!

I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in intoxication.

You want to know a sure way to lose money? Buy what's popular and don't know what you are investing in.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I can bear it.

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

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?