Walt Whitman Quotes

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you/ That you may be my poem/ I whisper with my lips close to your ear/ I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

Of all sad words, of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been.' Let's add this thought, unto this verse: 'It might have been a great deal worse.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

I have no mockings or arguments; I witness and wait.

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

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

The President is up there in the White House for you . . . . it is not you who are here for him,

If you see a good deal remarkable in me I see just as much remarkable in you.

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.

I inhale great draught of space...the east and west are mine...and the north and south are mine...I am grandeur than I thought...I did not know i held so much goodness.

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,
When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast – and that night I was happy.

All space, all time, The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use, Fill'd with eidolons only. The noiseless myriads, The infinite oceans where the rivers empty, The separate countless free identities, like eyesight, The true realities, eidolons. Not this the world, Nor these the universes, they the universes, Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, Eidolons, eidolons...

CENTURIES HENCE. Full of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,
To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence,
To you, yet unborn, these seeking you.
When you read these, I, that was visible, am become invisible;
Now it is you, compact, visible, realising my poems, seeking me;
Fancying how happy you were, if I could be with you, and become your loving
comrade;
Be it as if I were with you. Be not too certain but I am now with you.