Top 400 Walt Whitman Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “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.”

— Walt Whitman

252. “Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?”

— Walt Whitman

253. “He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.”

— Walt Whitman

254. “I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion’s sake.”

— Walt Whitman

255. “Long have you timidly waded Holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, Rise again, nod to me, shout, And laughingly dash with your hair.”

— Walt Whitman

256. “An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation.”

— Walt Whitman

257. “Loafe with me on the grass – loose the stop from your throat; Not words, not music or rhyme I want – not custom or lecture, not even the best; Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.”

— Walt Whitman

258. “A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls.”

— Walt Whitman

259. “In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed of perfection.”

— Walt Whitman

260. “Like a stone dropped into a pond, an article of that sort may spread out its concentric circles of consequences.”

— Walt Whitman

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

— Walt Whitman

262. “Clear and sweet is my soul, clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.”

— Walt Whitman

263. “The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer...”

— Walt Whitman

264. “You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, or even vagueness – ignorance, credulity – helps your enjoyment of these things.”

— Walt Whitman

265. “I conn’d old times, I sat studying at the feet of the great masters, Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.”

— Walt Whitman

266. “I am he that walks with the tender and growing night; I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. Press close barebosomed night! Press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds! Night of the large few stars! Still nodding night! Mad naked summer night! Smile.”

— Walt Whitman

267. “You want to know a sure way to lose money? Buy what’s popular and don’t know what you are investing in.”

— Walt Whitman

268. “A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking.”

— Walt Whitman

269. “Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.”

— Walt Whitman

270. “Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.”

— Walt Whitman

271. “The past and the present wilt. I have fill’d them, emptied them, And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.”

— Walt Whitman

272. “Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.”

— Walt Whitman

273. “The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.”

— Walt Whitman

274. “The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”

— Walt Whitman

275. “I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.”

— Walt Whitman

276. “There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.”

— Walt Whitman

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

— Walt Whitman

278. “Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?”

— Walt Whitman

279. “I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!”

— Walt Whitman

280. “O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!”

— Walt Whitman

281. “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings, necessarily blind to particulars and details, magnificently moving in vast masses.”

— Walt Whitman

282. “The beautiful uncut hair of graves.”

— Walt Whitman

283. “Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.”

— Walt Whitman

284. “Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.”

— Walt Whitman

285. “Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge and of the investigation of the depths of qualities and things.”

— Walt Whitman

286. “A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity; but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman.”

— Walt Whitman

287. “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

288. “Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over...”

— Walt Whitman

289. “The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions.”

— Walt Whitman

290. “I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election.”

— Walt Whitman

291. “I lean and loaf at my ease... observing a spear of summer grass.”

— Walt Whitman

292. “O amazement of things-even the least particle!”

— Walt Whitman

293. “I accept Reality and dare not question it, Materialism first and last imbuing.”

— Walt Whitman

294. “No dainty dolce affettuoso I.”

— Walt Whitman

295. “O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth, Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, But that before all my insolent poems, the real ME stands yet untouched, untold, altogether unreached, Withdrawn.”

— Walt Whitman

296. “The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.”

— Walt Whitman

297. “Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?”

— Walt Whitman

298. “A man can be a hero in any profession.”

— Walt Whitman

299. “A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing lacking.”

— Walt Whitman

300. “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.”

— Walt Whitman