Walt Whitman Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings

36 Famous Quotes by Walt Whitman
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“If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred”
Body Quotes
“If you done it, it ain't bragging.”
Bragging Quotes
“Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.”
Judgment Quotes
“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
Satisfaction Quotes
“Thunder on! Stride on! Democracy. Strike with vengeful strokes.”
Democracy Quotes
Source: Drum-Taps--Rise O Days From Your Fathomless Deep (no. 3)
“The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blur with the manuscript.”
Printing Quotes
Source: Leaves of Grass--Walt Whitman (pt. XV, st. 77)
“Where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well.”
Katydids Quotes
Source: Leaves of Grass--Song of Myself (pt. 33, l. 61)
“The butcher in his killing clothes.”
Butchering Quotes
Source: The Workingmen (pt. VI, st. 32)
“Lo! body and soul!--this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land,--the South And the North in the light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn. - Walt Whitman,”
New york Quotes
Source: Sequel to Drum-Taps--When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd (st. 12)
“Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others ... And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”
Love Quotes
“The real war will never get in the books.”
War Quotes
“The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first; Be not discouraged-- keep on-- there are divine things, well envelop'd; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.”
Silence Quotes
“Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”
Sleep Quotes
“In the faces of men and women I see God.”
Spirituality Quotes
“Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.”
Age Quotes
“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.”
Language Quotes
“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”
Letters Quotes
“To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”
Miracles Quotes
“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”
Simplicity Quotes
“There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.”
Unconscious Quotes
“Re-examine all you have been told . . . Dismiss what insults your Soul. -Walt Whitman.”
Advice / experience / wisdom Quotes
“On the beach at night, Stands a child with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky. Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, And nigh at hand, only a very little above, Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades. From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, Watching, silently weeps. Weep not, child, Weep not, my darling, With these kisses let me remove your tears, The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again, The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine. Then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter? Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? Something there is, (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper, I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.”
Beauty Quotes
“Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.”
Censorship Quotes
“Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.”
Class Quotes
“Many a good man I have seen go under.”
Defeat Quotes