Walt Whitman Quotes

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

I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.

I exist as I am, that is enough.

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding; And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

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

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

The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.

I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes - but is that all?

An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation.

Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?

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

Every hour of every day is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity; but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman.

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

Oh captain my captain

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries.

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!

Youth, large, lusty, loving -- Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?

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.

All is procession; the universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

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

Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough, To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then? I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.

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.

Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.

I dance with the dancers.

From this hour, freedom! Going where I like, my own master.

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

I henceforth tread the world, chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower.

As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.

As to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling), while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the Upper Yellowstone and the like afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the prairies and plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America's characteristic landscape.

Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.

Simplicity is the glory of expression.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

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

Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?

I see the President almost every day. I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face with its deep-cut lines, the eyes always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed.

There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sound contribute toward me.

Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find."

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

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Most works are most beautiful without ornament.

The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.