Walt Whitman Quotes: 38

• Resist much, obey little.

  Leaves of Grass

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

• Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes.

• Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

• Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.

• I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

• We convince by our presence.

• I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.

  Walt Whitman's Camden Conversations

• Peace is always beautiful.

  Leaves of Grass

• I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

  Song of Myself

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

• Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.

• If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.

  Leaves of Grass

• Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.

• Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.

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

  Leaves of Grass

• I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

  Leaves of Grass

• Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

• Argue not concerning God,…re-examine all that you have been told at church or school or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul…

• I act as the tongue of you,... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.

• Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.Healthy, free, the world before me.The long brown path before me leading me wherever I choose.Henceforth, I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune.Henceforth, I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing.

  Songs for the Open Road: Poems of Travel and Adventure

• I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I loveIf you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I meanBut I shall be good health to you nonethelessAnd filter and fibre your blood.

• This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best. Night, sleep, and the stars.

  Leaves of Grass

• I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.All seems beautiful to me.Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me; Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.

  Leaves of Grass

• 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,

• Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)

• The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.

• re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.[From the preface to Leaves Grass]

  Leaves of Grass

• TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little, Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-ward resumes its liberty.

  Leaves of Grass

• Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

• I believe in the flesh and the appetites; Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from;The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer; This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

  Leaves of Grass

• This is the city, and I am one of the citizens/Whatever interests the rest interests me

• Of Equality--as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.

  Leaves of Grass

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

• I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,Stuffed with the stuff that is course, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine, one of the nation, of many nations, the smallest the same and the the largest

  Song of Myself

• Songs of myselfI am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into new tongue. I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,..

• O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning!It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,I will have thousands of globes and all time.

• Songs of myselfClear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.