Quotes About Transcendence

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots

Song of Myself I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runway sun, 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. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.

And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality . . . . it is idle to try to alarm me

I have heard what the talkers were talking . . . . the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now; And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

As to me,I know of nothing but miracles.

The souls moving along ... are they invisible while the least atom of the stones is visible?

And that my Soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful.

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.

Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor, Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics ... The entities of entities, eidólons. Unfix'd yet fix'd, Ever shall be, ever have been and are, Sweeping the present to the infinite future, Eidólons, eidólons, eidólons.

Clear and sweet is my soul . . . . and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. Lack

The clock indicates the moment - but what does eternity indicate?

I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave, But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.

And while I paus'd it came to me that what he really sang for was not there only, Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes, But subtle, clandestine, away beyond, A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.

And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?

Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death I should die now

AS THE TIME DRAWS NIGH As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud, A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me. I shall go forth, I shall traverse The States awhile—but I cannot tell whither or how long; Perhaps soon, some day or night while I am singing, my voice will suddenly cease. O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this? Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us?… And yet it is enough, O soul! O soul! we have positively appear'd—that is enough.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains. (As quoted by Richard Powers in The Echo Maker)

God's transcendence is at an end. But he is not dead; he has been incorporated into human existence.

No more semblance or disemblance, no more God or Man, only an immanent logic of the principle of operativity.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.