Walt Whitman Quotes

American poet, essayist and journalist (1819–1892)

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Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American journalist and poet, most famous for his lifelong work on his book Leaves of Grass.

Bio from: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Portrait adapted from: Wikimedia Commons, George Collins Cox / Adam Cuerden (Public domain / CC0)

Birth Name: Walter Whitman

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Songs of myself
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate
into new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,..

Low hangs the moon, it rose late,
It is lagging - O I think it is heavy with love, with love.

Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.

I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me, You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.

O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face! To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!

Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,
Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,
With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch'd, and the white now gray
and ashy,
One wither'd rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;
But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?
Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?
No, while memories subtly play — the past vivid as ever;
For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee,
Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:
So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,
It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

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

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runway sun, I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again look for me under your boot soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you

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

The latest news . . . . discoveries, inventions, societies . . . . authors old and new, My dinner, dress, associates, looks, business, compliments, dues, The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, The sickness of one of my folks . . . . or of myself . . . . or ill-doing . . . . or loss or lack of money . . . . or depressions or exaltations, They come to me days and nights and go from me again, But they are not the Me myself.

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

None has begun to think how divine he himself is and how certain the future is.

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.