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Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman Quotes

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Famous Walt Whitman Quotes

“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.”

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Author:Walt Whitman
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“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree toad is a chef-d'oeurve for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels!”

BelieveEnoughHandsRunningI BelieveHeavenStarsPerfectTreeHighestMiracleEnvironmentalGrassSandEggsCowsGrainDepressingChefMiceLeafsMachineryStatuesScornHingesInfidelLeaves Of GrassToadsGrains Of SandParlorBlackberriesWrens
Author:Walt Whitman
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“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.”

PeopleThinkingMenWayHas BeensArtSometimesLiteratureIndividualLeaderMassAccountsAverageDepartmentImmenseSuperiorityGreat LeaderExhibitsLiterature And Art
Book:Prose Works 1892: Speciman Days
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“Lo! body and soul!--this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land,--the South And the North in the light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.”

SoulBodyLightLandNew YorkSouthShipsGrassCoveredShoreTidesCornManhattanOhioSparklingPrairieHurryingMissouriSpires
Book:Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1860-1867
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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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Book:Delphi Complete Works of Walt Whitman (Illustrated)
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“Books are to be called for and supplied on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half-sleep, but in the highest sense an exercise, a gymnastic struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself.”

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Book:Two rivulets, including Democratic vistas, Centennial songs, and Passage to India [and As a strong bird on pinions free, and Memoranda during the war. Author's ed
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“As to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling), while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the Upper Yellowstone and the like afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the prairies and plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America's characteristic landscape.”

KnowsGivingFirstsShowsFeelingsLastsAmericaFallNaturalMy OwnStandardsSightClaimsLandscapeCharacteristicsSceneryStunningNorth AmericaThoughts And FeelingsPrairieYosemiteNiagaraYellowstoneNiagara Falls
Book:Specimen Days & Collect
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“Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love.”

KnowsMenLoveHandsEarthSpiritPeaceBornMy OwnCreationHe ManBrotherLoversPromiseArgumentSpreadMy BrotherMy SisterSpirit Of GodHands Of God
Book:Annotated LEAVES OF GRASS with English Grammar Exercises: by Walt Whitman (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
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“I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men-I saw them; I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war; But I saw they were not as was thought; They themselves were fully at rest-they suffer'd not; The living remain'd and suffer'd-the mother suffer'd, And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffer'd, And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.”

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Book:Passage to India
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