Walt Whitman Quotes

the swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no . . . . when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart . . . . and when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape . . . . or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth — then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth.

I say the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their religion.

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.

...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...

O LIVING always, always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am
content;)
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn
and look at where I cast them,
To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses
behind.

I said: "Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!" He was hilarious: "That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life."

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries.

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw patches down upon me also; The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious; My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre? would not people laugh at me? It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil; I am he who knew what it was to be evil; I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, Blabbed, blushed, resented, lied, stole, grudged; Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak; Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant; The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me; The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting; Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Say on, sayers! sing on, singers! Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost, It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use, When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear.

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.

I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys of Switzerland - I mark the long winters and the isolation.

Si quieres saber donde esta tu corazón, mira donde va tu mente cuando sueñas despierto.

Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails, She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star at night, By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read,

Mikor e kései órán a szürkületben egyedül üldögélek s az égő tölgy lángja lobog,
Régmúlt háborús jeleneteken elmélkedem – számtalan, eltemetett ismeretlen katonán,
Az üres neveken, olyanokon, melyeket nem írtak sem égre, sem tengerre, a vissza-nem-térteken,
A csata utáni kurta békén, zord, hantoló osztagokon,
Egész Amerikából, Északról, Délről, Keletről, Nyugatról, ahonnan jöttek, mély árkokba összegyűjtött halottakon:
Az erdős Maine-en, Új Anglia farmjain, a termékeny Pennsylvanián, Illinoison, Ohion,
A mérhetetlen Nyugaton, Virginián, Délen, Carolinákon, Texason,
(Még itt is, szobám árnyékaiban és homályos fényei közt, a halk, lobogó lángokban,
Ismét látom a délceg, bátran támadó sorokat, amint felmagasodnak – hallom a hadseregek ritmikus menetét;)
Nektek énekelem most ezt a dalt, mindnyájatoknak – ti meg-nem-örökített nevek – a háború sötét hagyatéka,
Villanjon fel ebben a dalban a régen elhanyagolt kötelesség – bennem összegyűlt misztikus névsorotok,
Minden nevet felidézek a sötétségből és a halottak hamvaiból,
Mélyen a szívembe véslek ezentúl benneteket, hogy sokáig emlékezzem,
A ti ismeretlen neveitek misztikus soraira, akár Északról, akár Délről jöttetek,
E szürkületi dalban éltek ti tovább, szeretettel bebalzsamozva.