Walt Whitman

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.