Walt Whitman Famous Quotes
"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."
"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."
"Judging from the main portion of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy."
"Answer That you are here---that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
"I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is."
The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.
"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"
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons.
"I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends."
"My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me, I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof in my face, With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic."
"And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheefully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait... And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)"
"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."
"I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value,"
I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.
"I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."
"Do I contradict myself Very well then I contradict myself,"
"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."
If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred.
Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.
Nothing endures but personal qualities.
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.
The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
"I celebrate myself, and sing myself."
Walt Whitman Quotations
The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.
Walter Bagehot
A year from now you may wish you had started today.
Karen Lamb
Every man is the architect of his own fortune.
Sallust
To be positive To be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Ambrose Bierce
"If the objects who serve us feel ecstacy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired. The idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism."
Marquis de Sade
"Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didnt have it and thought of other things if you did."
James Arthur Baldwin
"Though friendship is not quick to burn, It is explosive stuff."
May Sarton
"I may not believe in what you say, but I will die for your right to do so."
Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore
Henry Ward Beecher
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
Michelangelo Buonarroti