Inspirational Quotes by Walt Whitman (American Poet)

Inspirational Quotations by Walt Whitman (American Poet)

Walt Whitman (1819–92) was an American poet who pioneered a distinctive open poetic form and an overpowering voice that shaped 20th century-American poetry.

Whitman was born on Long Island, New York. His father was a farmer and carpenter. When Walter was four, his family moved to adjacent Brooklyn, then a small city. He embraced the city and the country equally. Whitman worked as a journalist in Brooklyn and often rambled around the streets of New York people-watching and searching for story ideas.

Whitman started writing poetry when America went into the Civil War. He self-published Leaves of Grass (1855) and arranged for it to be sold in different formats, at different prices, to reach as broad an audience as possible. His original form, subject, and overt sensuality received widespread disparagement in the conservative society of his day. Despite his best efforts, Whitman sold only ten copies of the first edition and gave away the rest. He sent out copies to several prominent writers and critics. Only a few answered him; Ralph Waldo Emerson responded positively and said, “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.”

For the rest of his life, Whitman expanded and revised the poems in Leaves of Grass. The verses that ultimately made him a literary celebrity were the poems he composed on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, “Oh Captain My Captain” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

The nine editions of Leaves of Grass form a single all-encompassing epic poetic sequence. In it, Whitman embraced a range of sentiments—concerning optimism of America’s prospects to an increasing tragic tone about the Civil War.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Walt Whitman

Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Language

The city fireman-the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-pack’d square,
The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,
The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line,
the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,
The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets-the bringing to bear of the hooks and ladders, and their execution,
The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors, if the fire smoulders under them,
The crowd with their lit faces, watching-the glare and dense shadows;….
—Walt Whitman

I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Parties

What a devil art thou, Poverty! How many desires—how many aspirations after goodness and truth—how many noble thoughts, loving wishes toward our fellows, beautiful imaginings thou hast crushed under thy heel, without remorse or pause!
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Poverty, The Poor

I see great things in baseball. It’s our game – the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Baseball

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Journeys, Stars, Nature

The powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Life

Camerado! This is no book; who touches this touches a man.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Books, Literature, Reading

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Beauty, Flowers

I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease… observing a spear of summer grass.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Loneliness

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Cities, City Life, Character

At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really knows or feels what Poetry is at its highest, as in the Bible, for instance, or Homer or Shakespeare. I see he covertly or plainly likes best superb verbal polish, or something old or odd
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Poetry

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Style

I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Science

Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!)
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Parties

I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the The Past triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election.
—Walt Whitman

Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.
—Walt Whitman

Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Change

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.
—Walt Whitman

Camerado, I give you my hand, I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself?
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Friends, Friendship

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or streching eyeless years,
The early lilacs became part of the child,
And grass and white and red morning-glories and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird…
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Imagination

I am large; I contain multitudes.
—Walt Whitman

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Gardening, Flowers

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Diet

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Literature, Reading, Books

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Age, Old Age, Aging

Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Time Management, Time

Out of every fruition of success, no matter what, comes forth something to make a new effort necessary.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Success is not everything

Produce great men, the rest follows.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Example

Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.
—Walt Whitman

The city sleeps and the country sleeps, the living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, the old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; and these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, and such as it is to be of these more or less I am, and of these one and all I weave the song of myself.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Sleep

I am an acme of things accomplished, and I am encloser of things to be.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Man

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: The Military

I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes—but is that all?
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Universe

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Travel, Tourism

When I heard the learn
—Walt Whitman

Their manners, speech, dress, friendships,—the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage—their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states—the fierceness of their roused resentment—their curiosity and welcome of novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy—their susceptibility to a slight—the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors—the fluency of their speech—their delight in music, a sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul—their good temper and open-handedness—the terrible significance of their elections, the President’s taking off his hat to them, not they to him—these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: America

This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: Face, Faces

We convince by our presence.
—Walt Whitman
Topics: The Present, Present

Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow.
—Walt Whitman