"Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity."
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Quote collection
Walt Whitman quotes (page 22 of 25)
494 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework."
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"If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere -- probably more than the rest of the world combined. Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations -- many rare combinations. To have great poets, there must be great audiences too."
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"If there were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with, it is enough to send him with his wreath to the memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day, bitterer than gall - indeed a crucifixion day - that it did not conquer him - that he unflinchingly stemmed it, and resolved to lift himself and the Union out of it."
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"O amazement of things-even the least particle!"
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"Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?"
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"Are you the new person drawn toward me?"
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"This hour I tell things in confidence/ I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you."
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"A simple separate person is not contained between his hat and his boots."
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"Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?"
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"I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am."
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"The past, the future, majesty, love - if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them."
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"I have no mockings or arguments; I witness and wait."
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"Camerado! This is no book; who touches this touches a man."
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"And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?"
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"The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them"
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"And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me."
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"There is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth - but all is truth without exception; And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am, And sing and laugh and deny nothing."
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"I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!"
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"Ah little recks the laborer, How near his work is holding him to God, The loving Laborer through space and time"
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