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Poetry Quotes by Walt Whitman

82 Poetry quotes by Walt Whitman

All Poetry quotes Walt Whitman’s page

Whitman's verses celebrate the link between body and soul, saying the poet holds both heaven's pleasures and hell's pains. He urges readers to question what schools and churches have taught, suggesting that each person can become a living poem. For him, poetry is a shared human passion that binds us together.

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Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems

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To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

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And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

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“I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.”

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

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The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

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“Your very flesh shall be a great poem...”

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The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.

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The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.

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Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric…

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

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“The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are…

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“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

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“Human bodies are words, myriads of words; In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay;”

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Song of Myself is a new kind of poem , which is shocked, puzzled, amused, amazed all the average readers, but it…

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Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and…

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O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice! O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths! O lavish,…

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“Beautiful dripping fragments—the negligent list of one after another, as I happen to call them to me, or think of them, The…

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Human bodies are words, myriads of words, (In the best poems re-appears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay, Every part…

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“I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal…

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Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not…

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this is thy hour o soul, thy free flight into the wordless, away from books, away from art, the day erased, the…

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I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems,…

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Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your…

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“Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you,…

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“re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and…

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Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of…

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“When the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying,…

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“Song of myself Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset--earth of the mountains…

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“Song of myself A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the…

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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?…

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Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all…

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“Your true soul and body appear before me. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my…

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“ He is a type of our best — our rarest. Electrical, I was going to say, beyond anyone, perhaps, ever was:…

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“(I know, it's a poem but oh well). Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing…

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This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that…

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“A great poem is for ages and ages in common and for all degrees and complexions and all departments and sects and…

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“Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900. To You WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I…

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“All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman it…

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“O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts…

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More by Walt Whitman

O lands! O all so dear to me - what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is.

“Each of us inevitable, Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth, Each of us allow'd the eternal…

Comerado, this is no book,Who touches this, touches a man,(Is it night? Are we here alone?)It is I you hold, and who holds you,I…

I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in…

Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to…

“it makes such difference where you read”

Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of…

Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality.

I think I could always live with animals. The more you're around people, the more you love animals.

“I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the…

So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road.

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up…

Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless-each of us with his or her right upon the earth.

Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din…