Quotes About Growth

It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life, Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they are shed out of you.

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

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw its patches down upon me also, The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious, My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?

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

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

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.

La hojita más pequeña de hierba nos enseña que la muerte no existe; que si alguna vez existió, fue sólo para producir la vida.

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

I depart as air .... I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.

Stronger Lessons Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?

I conn'd old times, I sat studying at the feet of the great masters, Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.

If he breathes into anything that was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe.

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 polish'd breasts of melons.

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

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.

However convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here.

Crezco por igual en las regiones vastas y en las estrechas, crezco por igual entren los negros y los blancos.

A great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

The pleasure 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.

Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body (Leaves of Grass preface)