The collection / 170 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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170 results · Page 5 of 8Play this collection ▷

01c. 1855 AD

The words of the true poems give you more than poems, they give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, & everything else, they balance the ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes, they do not seek beauty, they are sought, forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick. They prepare for death, yet they are not the finish, but rather the outset, they bring none of his or her terminus or to be content & full, whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of the stars, to learn one of the meanings, to launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings & never be quiet again.

Walt Whitman / quote

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02c. 1855 AD

Great is language . . . . it is the mightiest of the sciences,It is the fulness and color and form and diversity of the earth . . . . and of men and women . . . . and of all qualities and processes;It is greater than wealth . . . . it is greater than buildings or ships or religions or paintings or music.

Walt Whitman / quote

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03c. 1855 AD

Or may-be one who is puzzled at me.As if I were not puzzled at myself!

Walt Whitman / quote

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04c. 1855 AD

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

Walt Whitman / quote

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05c. 1855 AD

I Think it is lost.....but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost .The body sluggish, aged, cold, the ember left from earlier fires shall duly flame again.

Walt Whitman / quote

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06c. 1855 AD

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.You must travel it by yourself.It is not far. It is within reach.Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.

Walt Whitman / quote

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07c. 1855 AD

O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

Walt Whitman / quote

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08c. 1855 AD

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

Walt Whitman / quote

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09c. 1855 AD

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!

Walt Whitman / quote

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10c. 1855 AD

And now it [grass] seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves, Tenderly will I use you curling grass,It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps, And here you are the mothers'

Walt Whitman / quote

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11c. 1855 AD

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, None has understood you, but I understand you, None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself, None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you, None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you, I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

Walt Whitman / quote

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12c. 1855 AD

If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.

Walt Whitman / quote

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13c. 1855 AD

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 / quote

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14c. 1855 AD

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 labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, 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.

Walt Whitman / quote

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15c. 1855 AD

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

Walt Whitman / quote

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16c. 1855 AD

Oh captain my captain

Walt Whitman / quote

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17c. 1855 AD

When I Read the Book"When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life,Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

Walt Whitman / quote

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18c. 1855 AD

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Walt Whitman / quote

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19c. 1855 AD

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago.

Walt Whitman / quote

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20c. 1855 AD

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.

Walt Whitman / quote

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21c. 1855 AD

Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents, Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising, See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.

Walt Whitman / quote

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22c. 1855 AD

Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing Night!Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars!Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!from Strophe 21, "Song of Myself

Walt Whitman / quote

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23c. 1855 AD

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.

Walt Whitman / quote

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24c. 1855 AD

WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear—it never tires me. To you, your name also; Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name?

Walt Whitman / quote

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