Quotes By Walt Whitman

To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.

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.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.

Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.

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.

I exist as I am, that is enough.

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

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

I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.

Produce great men, the rest follows.

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

Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

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.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

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?

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.

We convince by our presence.

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.

The beautiful uncut hair of graves.