Quotes from Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Over the mountain growths, disease and sorrow, An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, High in the purer, happier air.

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves, As souls only understand souls.

I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric productAnd look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.

Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you? I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by you...

The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted, Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, The hundred & fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.

And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.... And as to you corpse, I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips — I reach to the polished breasts of melons. And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God, For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God, No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God, and about death. I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least...

Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropped in the street — and every one is signed by God's name And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.

The past and present wilt — I have filled them, emptied them, And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Of Equality--as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.

ThoughtOf equality- as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chancesand rights as myself- as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.

O you youths, Western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers!