Quotes to inspire and reflect

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Agonies are one of my changes of garments.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy, To touch my person to someone else’s is about as much as I can stand.

Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death.

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

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 bare-bosom’d night—press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds—night of the large few stars! Still nodding night—mad naked summer night.

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time.

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This is the common air that bathes the globe.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

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.

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

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

I celebrate myself, and sing 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.

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.

But me they’ll lash in hammock, drop me deep. Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I’ll dream fast asleep. I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there? Just ease these darbies [manacles] at the wrist, And roll me over fair! I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.

One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Ah, why should tears the pale cheek fret For aught that waneth here below. Let go, let go!

Dies, all dies! The grass it dies, but in vernal rain Up it springs and it lives again; Over and over, again and again It lives, it dies and it lives again.

All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve, And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.

If Luther’s day expand to Darwin’s year, Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear?

What troops Of generous boys in happiness thus bred— Saturnians through life’s Tempe led, Went from the North and came from the South, With golden mottoes in the mouth, To lie down midway on a bloody bed.

Foemen at morn, but friends at eve— Fame or country least their care: (What like a bullet can undeceive!)

The poor old Past, The Future’s slave.

All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.

When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin’s lamp.

No, never say nothin’ without you’re compelled tu, An’ then don’t say nothin’ thet you can be held tu.

Ef you want peace, the thing you’ve gut tu du Is jes’ to show you’re up to fightin’, tu.

It’s ’most enough to make a deacon swear.

I don’t believe in princerple, But oh I du in interest.

My gran’ther’s rule was safer ’n ’tis to crow: Don’t never prophesy—onless ye know.

You’ve gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.

Ez fer war, I call it murder— There you hev it plain an’ flat; I don’t want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that.

There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge.

Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can’t write, can surely review.