Walt Whitman

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

Not I, not anyone else, can travel that road for you, you must travel it for yourself.

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

Seeing, hearing, feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

The real war will never get in the books.

The beauty of independence departure actions that rely on themselves.

Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

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?

To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

Copulation is no more foul to me than death is.

I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.

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

Be curious not judgmental.

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?

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

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

Freedom - to walk free and own no superior.

Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you and were tender with you and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you and disputed passage with you?

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

In the confusion we stay with each other happy to be together speaking without uttering a single word.

Here or henceforward it is all the same to me I accept Time absolutely.

Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity When I give I give myself.

We convince by our presence.

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

To have great poets there must be great audiences.

And there is no trade or employment, but the young man following it may become a hero.

Oh while I live to be the ruler of life not a slave to meet life as a powerful conqueror and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.

O public road I say back I am not afraid to leave you yet I love you you express me better than I can express myself.

I may be as bad as the worst but thank God I am as good as the best.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

When I give I give myself.

I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before Or else I am awake for the first time and all before has been a mean sleep.

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred.

Speech is the twin of my vision it is unequal to measure itself it provokes me forever it says sarcastically Walt you contain enough why don't you let it out then?

And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.

To die is different from what any one supposed and luckier.

After you have exhausted what there is in business politics conviviality and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.

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.

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.

I no doubt deserved my enemies but I don't believe I deserved my friends.

There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.

There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.

I celebrate myself and sing myself.

Whoever degrades another degrades me And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.

Produce great men the rest follows.

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.

Nothing endures but personal qualities.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself I am large I contain multitudes.

I accept reality and dare not question it.

I say to mankind Be not curious about God. For I who am curious about each am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object yet understand God not in the least.

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors nor even in its newspapers or inventors but always most in the common people.

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

Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

I exist as I am that is enough.

The beautiful uncut hair of graves.

If you done it it ain't bragging.

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.

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.

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

The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

Other lands have their vitality in a few a class but we have it in the bulk of our people.

The shallow consider liberty a release from all law from every constraint. The wise man sees in it on the contrary the potent Law of Laws.

The future is no more uncertain than the present.

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

Simplicity is the glory of expression.

The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.

All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.

Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.

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

Viewed freely the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect race and range of time and is both the free and compacted composition of all.

I am as bad as the worst but thank God I am as good as the best.