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Re-examine all you have been told . . . Dismiss what insults your Soul. -Walt Whitman.
Topic: Advice / Experience / Wisdom
Source: None
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Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
Topic: Age
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Beauty
Source: None
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The butcher in his killing clothes.
Topic: Butchering
Source: The Workingmen (pt. VI, st. 32)
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Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
Topic: Censorship
Source: None
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Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.
Topic: Class
Source: None
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Many a good man I have seen go under.
Topic: Defeat
Source: None
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Thunder on! Stride on! Democracy. Strike with vengeful
strokes.
Topic: Democracy
Source: Drum-Taps--Rise O Days From Your Fathomless Deep (no. 3)
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The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
Topic: Earth
Source: None
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In the faces of men and women I see God.
Topic: God
Source: None
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Where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree
over the well.
Topic: Katydids
Source: Leaves of Grass--Song of Myself (pt. 33, l. 61)
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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.
Topic: Language
Source: None
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The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
Topic: Letters
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Love
Source: None
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Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless - each of us with his or her right upon the earth; Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth; Each of us here as divinely as any is here. -Walt Whitman.
Topic: Mankind
Source: None
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To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.
Topic: Miracles
Source: None
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A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
Topic: Nature
Source: None
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I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Topic: Nature
Source: None
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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,
Topic: New York
Source: Sequel to Drum-Taps--When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd (st. 12)
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To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
Topic: Poetry
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Printing
Source: Leaves of Grass--Walt Whitman (pt. XV, st. 77)
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Nothing endures but personal qualities.
Topic: Quality
Source: None
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I accept reality and dare not question it.
Topic: Reality
Source: None
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Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.
Topic: Self-sacrifice
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Silence
Source: None
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The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
Topic: Simplicity
Source: None
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Simplicity is the glory of expression.
Topic: Simplicity
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Sleep
Source: None
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In the faces of men and women I see God.
Topic: Spirituality
Source: None
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There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate with the theory of the earth.
Topic: Theory
Source: None
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There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
Topic: Unconscious
Source: None
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The real war will never get in the books.
Topic: War
Source: None
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