Walt Whitman Quotes

By Alan Reiner – July 22, 2024

‘Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Be curious, not judgmental.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.’ – Walt Whitman

‘And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.’ – Walt Whitman

‘To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Re-examine all that you have been told… dismiss that which insults your soul.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.’ – Walt Whitman

‘To have great poets, there must be great audiences.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I exist as I am, that is enough.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I see great things in baseball. It’s our game – the American game.’ – Walt Whitman

‘We convince by our presence.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?’ – Walt Whitman

‘Simplicity is the glory of expression.’ – Walt Whitman

‘A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.’ – Walt Whitman

‘When I give I give myself.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.’ – Walt Whitman

‘And your very flesh shall be a great poem.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The future is no more uncertain than the present.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.’ – Walt Whitman

‘In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I accept reality and dare not question it.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The beautiful uncut hair of graves.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I celebrate myself, and sing myself.’ – Walt Whitman

‘He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.’ – Walt Whitman

‘To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Freedom – to walk free and own no superior.’ – Walt Whitman

‘There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God – I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Produce great men, the rest follows.’ – Walt Whitman

‘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.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?’ – Walt Whitman

‘To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The real war will never get in the books.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.’ – Walt Whitman

‘All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes – but is that all?’ – Walt Whitman

‘There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.’ – Walt Whitman

‘If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.’ – Walt Whitman

‘The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.’ – Walt Whitman

‘And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?’ – Walt Whitman

‘Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.’ – Walt Whitman

‘I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Nothing endures but personal qualities.’ – Walt Whitman

‘Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then?’ – Walt Whitman

‘And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.’ – Walt Whitman

‘A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.’ – Walt Whitman

‘There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.’ – Walt Whitman

‘O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.’ – Walt Whitman