Quotes from Walt Whitman

All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any, (What is less or more than a touch?) Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

Quédate hoy conmigo, vive conmigo un día y una noche y te mostraré el origen de todos los poemas.

Sun so generous it shall be you- Leaves of Grass

WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear—it never tires me. To you, your name also; Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name?

Thought Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness; As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who do not believe in men.

I announce adhesiveness-I say it shall be limitless, unloosen'd; I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for.

America doesn't know today how proud she ought to be of her Ingersoll .

Songs of myself Clear 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.

I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, I dream'd that was the new city of Friends, Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest, It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words.

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries.

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less, And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them. And I know I am solid and sound, To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. And I know I am deathless. I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass, I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.

he cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one

Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back! Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head and slumbers and dreams and gaping, I discover myself on the verge of the usual mistake.

Shocked? I consider Bob one of the constellations of our time — of our country — America — a bright, magnificent constellation. Besides, all the constellations—not alone of this but of any time—shock the average intelligence for a while. In one respect that helps to prove it a constellation. Think of Voltaire , Paine , Hicks, not to say anything of modern men whom we could mention. {Whitman's thoughts on his close friend, the great Robert Ingersoll }

O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones, The exquisite realization of health; O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, O I say now these are the soul!

Re-examine all that you have been told.

I am the man, I suffered, I was there.

Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents, Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising, See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.

I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther.

A heroic person walks at his ease through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not.

What stays with you longest and deepest? Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

The new rule shall rule as the soul rules, and as the love and justice and equality that are in the soul rule.

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 a new tongue.