40 Famous Walt Whitman Quotes
Considered one of America’s most influential poets, Walt Whitman aimed to transcend traditional epics and eschew normal aesthetic form to mirror the potential freedoms to be found in America. In 1855, he self-published the collection Leaves of Grass; the book is now a landmark in American literature, though at the time of its publication it was considered highly controversial. Whitman later worked as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War, writing the collection Drum Taps (1865) in connection to the experiences of war-torn soldiers. Having continued to produce new editions of Leaves of Grass along with original works, Whitman died on March 26, 1892, in Camden, New Jersey.
- “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
- “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering… these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love… these are what we stay alive for.”
- “Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”
- “My words itch at your ears till you understand them”
- “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
- “Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light
and of every moment of your life”
- “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.”
- “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”
- “Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.”
- “I am satisfied … I see, dance, laugh, sing.”
- “Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.”
- “I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.”
- “And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles”
- “Let your soul stand cool and composed
before a million universes.”
- “Do anything, but let it produce joy.”
- “I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”
- “If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”
- “Resist much, obey little.”
- “Peace is always beautiful.”
- “I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or
wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”
- “I accept Time absolutely.
It alone is without flaw,
It alone rounds and completes all,
That mystic baffling wonder.”
- “Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
Walt Whitman - “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?”
- “This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.”
- “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
- “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.”
- “There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”
- “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
- “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.”
- “What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.”
- “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
- “I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)”
- “The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet,
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.”
- “I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise.”
- “Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.”
- “I am enamour’d of growing out-doors.”
- “I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.”
- “These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me.”
- “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.”
- “Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early red start twittering through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?”
