Leaves Of Grass Quotes

I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.

Clear and sweet is my soul, clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

We can hear others, and we can travel with them without moving, and we can imagine them, and we are all connected one to the other by a crazy root system, like so many leaves of grass. But the game makes me wonder wheter we can really ever fully become another.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

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?

Unscrew the locks from the doors ! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs !

There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became.

I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

There will never be any more perfection than there is now.

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

Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!

I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.

These are the days that must happen to you.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death. And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it.

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

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.

Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.

Something there is more immortal even than the stars.

I tried to film 'Leaves of Grass' in Oklahoma, but it was literally about a million dollars less to shoot in Louisiana.

NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.

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.

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

In the faces of men and women, I see God.

I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

Nothing endures but personal qualities.

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

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?

I know I am deathless…We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

We were together. I forget the rest.

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.

I have never really thought of him as a person, either.... A guy whose strings were broken, who didn’t feel the root of his leaves of grass connected to the field, a guy who was cracked. Like me.

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love.

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.

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest.

Camerado! This is no book; who touches this touches a man.

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done, / The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done.

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.

I am too not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots.

I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.

O amazement of things-even the least particle!

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.

This is what you should do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone 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 ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

The English tourist in American literature wants above all things something different from what he has at home. For this reason the one American writer whom the English whole-heartedly admire is Walt Whitman. There, you will hear them say, is the real American undisguised. In the whole of English literature there is no figure which resembles his - among all our poetry none in the least comparable to Leaves of Grass