Walt Whitman Quotes

I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.

Simplicity is the glory of expression.

These are the days that must happen to you.

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

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

Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.

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.

Be curious, not judgmental.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

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

Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

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, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, 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.

In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.

There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

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 cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.

Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Resist much, obey little.

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