Walt Whitman Grass Quotations

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?

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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

I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

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

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

The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.

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

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.

NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.

Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her that it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

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

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.

I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable.

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

Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!

I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?

These are the days that must happen to you.

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

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

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...

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

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.

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

Something there is more immortal even than the stars.

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

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

Strong and content I travel the open road.

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

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

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

O amazement of things-even the least particle!

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

Unscrew the locks from the doors ! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs !

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean

There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became...

I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.

The beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots,

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love.

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done, / The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won

I know I am deathless…We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware, I sit content, And if each and all be aware, I sit content.

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.

I lean and loaf at my ease... observing a spear of summer grass.

I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.

Clear and sweet is my soul, clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.