Quotes from Walt Whitman

Though he would sometimes not touch a book for a week, he generally spent part of each day in reading…if he sat in the library an hour, he would have half a dozen volumes around him, on the table, on chairs and on the floor. He seemed to read a few pages here and a few pages there, and pass from place to place, from volume to volume…sometimes (though very rarely) he would get sufficiently interested in a volume to read it all.

Though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space, Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, I know very well I could not. - from I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

Resist much.

Life is the little that is left over from dying.

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, with the twirl of my tongue I encompass words and volumes of words

The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into any thing that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer ... he is individual... he is complete in himself... the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not.

Urge and urge and urge, Always the procreant urge of the world.

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sounds contribute towards me.

In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection.

I speak the password primeval.

As to me,I know of nothing but miracles.

Some people are so much sunlight to the square inch. I am still bathing in the cheer he radiated.

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. -from Song of Myself

Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Tenderly, be not impatient, (Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, Strong is your hold O love.)

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean, Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.

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

Life breaks into beauty again and we realize that man may bring hell itself into the world, but that Nature ever patiently waits to be his natural paradise.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me, Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to my good will, Scattering it freely forever.

Have the past struggles succeeded? What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature? Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary. -from Songs of the Open Road

The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

I swear to you the architects shall appear without fall, I swear to you they will understand you and justify you, The greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all and is faithful to all, He and the rest shall not forget you, they shall perceive that you are not an iota less than they, You shall be fully glorified in them.