A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul.

The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework.

I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.

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.

Produce great men, the rest follows.

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!