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O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you; As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.
Walt Whitman -
An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation.
Walt Whitman
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There was a child went forth everyday, And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or dread, 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 stretching cycles of years.
Walt Whitman -
We arrange our lives-even the best and boldest men and women that exist, just as much as the most limited-with reference to what society conventionally rules and makes right.
Walt Whitman -
Keep your face always toward the sunshine everything could be worse but isn't and so we are justified in being grateful - and shadows everything could be better but isn't and so it is easy to be bitter 'unless you decide to look on the bright side will fall behind you.
Walt Whitman -
Resist much, obey little.
Walt Whitman -
I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained; 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 his kind that lived thousands of years ago; Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth.
Walt Whitman -
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
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Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckoned the earth much? Have you practised so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Walt Whitman -
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked.
Walt Whitman -
Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her shall I follow.
Walt Whitman -
All truths wait in all things.
Walt Whitman -
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Walt Whitman -
What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
Walt Whitman
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Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, / The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young.
Walt Whitman -
The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.
Walt Whitman -
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines.
Walt Whitman -
O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.
Walt Whitman -
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 of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?
Walt Whitman -
Out of every fruition of success, no matter what, comes forth something to make a new effort necessary.
Walt Whitman
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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 -
Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturned love; But now I think there is no unreturned love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not returned; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)
Walt Whitman -
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.
Walt Whitman -
A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.
Walt Whitman