Walt Whitman Quotes - Page 13

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Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

Walt Whitman

Beautiful, Death, Dying

1860 Leaves of Grass, 'Proto-Leaf', later renamed 'Starting From Paumanok' (from 1867).

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To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every inch of space is a miracle, every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; every spear of grass-the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, all these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

Walt Whitman

Dark, Men, Squares

Walt Whitman (2004). “Whitman: The Mystic Poets”, p.96, SkyLight Paths Publishing

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Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest.

Walt Whitman

Drinking, Son, Men

"Song of Myself " l. 497 (written 1855)

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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.

Walt Whitman

Book, Eye, Night

"Song of Myself " l. 33 (written 1855)

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A simple separate person is not contained between his hat and his boots.

Walt Whitman

Simple, People, Identity

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To the garden of the world anew descending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,
The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again,
amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous,
My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous,
Existing I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present, content with the past,
By my side or back of me Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her just the same.

Walt Whitman

Beautiful, Daughter, Spring

Walt Whitman, “To The Garden The World”

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The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions.

Walt Whitman

Individuality, Conformity, Institutions

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What beauty there is in words; what a lurking curious charm in the sound some words.

Walt Whitman

Beauty, Sound, Curious

Walt Whitman, William White (2007). “Daybooks and Notebooks, Volume III: Diary in Canada, Notebooks, Index”, p.732, NYU Press

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...of two simple men I saw today on the pier in the midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends, the one to remain hung on the other's neck and passionately kissed him. While the one to depart tightly pressed the one to remain in his arms.

Walt Whitman

Simple, Men, Two

Walt Whitman (1868). “Poems”, p.293

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Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as
now,
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even
the sight of the wounded,)
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

Walt Whitman

Powerful, Eye, Sight

Walt Whitman (2013). “Walt Whitman: Selected Poems 1855-1892”, p.280, St. Martin's Press

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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.

Walt Whitman

Art, Children, Years

Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.149, NYU Press

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

Walt Whitman

Beautiful, War, Leaves Of Grass

'Reconciliation'

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

Walt Whitman

Leaves Of Grass, Individual, Theory

Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.206, NYU Press

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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.

Walt Whitman

Book, School, Reality

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Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! — ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is — nor what faith or art or health really is.

Walt Whitman

Sweet, Art, Cities

Walt Whitman (2012). “Specimen Days & Collect”, p.104, Courier Corporation

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The purpose of democracy - supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance - is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures

Walt Whitman

Ignorance, Democracy, Rulership

Walt Whitman (2003). “The Portable Walt Whitman”, p.409, Penguin

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

Walt Whitman

Strong, Army, Power

Walt Whitman (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1860-1867”, p.335, NYU Press

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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

Determination, Thinking, Compassion

Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.175, NYU Press

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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.

Walt Whitman

Night, Sky, Sound

Walt Whitman (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Walt Whitman (Illustrated)”, p.42, Delphi Classics

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O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! My South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!

Walt Whitman

Blood, Evil, Southern

Walt Whitman (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1860-1867”, p.408, NYU Press

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That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.

Walt Whitman

Beautiful, Law, Games

"With Walt Whitman in Camden". Book by Horace Traubel, Vol. IV (p. 508), 1906.

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With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

Walt Whitman

Strong, Fall, Blow

Walt Whitman (2009). “The Americanness of Walt Whitman”, p.13, Wildside Press LLC

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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

Beautiful, Artist, Men

Walt Whitman (2014). “Specimen Days & Collect”, p.479, Melville House

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I dance with the dancers.

Walt Whitman

Dance, Dancer

Walt Whitman (2014). “Whitman: Poems”, p.9, Everyman's Library

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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.

Walt Whitman

Nature, Business, Simplicity

1876-77 Speciman Days, 'New Themes Entered Upon'.

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Born: May 31, 1819
Died: March 26, 1892
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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