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You have not known what you are - you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life; Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return? The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk.
Walt Whitman -
Now, dearest comrade, lift me to your face, We must separate awhileHere! take from my lips this kiss. Whoever you are, I give it especially to you; So long!And I hope we shall meet again.
Walt Whitman
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Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.
Walt Whitman -
As for me, I know nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, Or stand under the trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love, Or sleep in bed at night with any one I love, Or watch honey bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon... Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, Or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring... What stranger miracles are there?
Walt Whitman -
I know I am deathless We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.
Walt Whitman -
The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
Walt Whitman -
I was in the midst of it all - saw war where war is worst - not on the battlefields, no - in the hospitals ... there I mixed with it: and now I say God damn the wars - allw ars: God damn every war: God damn 'em! God damn 'em!
Walt Whitman -
When one reaches out to help another he touches the face of God.
Walt Whitman
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The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework.
Walt Whitman -
If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.
Walt Whitman -
O lands! O all so dear to me - what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is.
Walt Whitman -
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death. And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it.
Walt Whitman -
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections.
Walt Whitman -
Forsake all inhibitions, Pursue thy dreams.
Walt Whitman
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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 or fail of their sanity.
Walt Whitman -
O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.
Walt Whitman -
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 -
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.
Walt Whitman -
My call is the call of battle- I nourish active rebellion;/ He going with me must go well armed.
Walt Whitman -
Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding; And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.
Walt Whitman
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Now I see that there is no such thing as love unreturn'd. The pay is certain, one way or another.
Walt Whitman -
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep for the dead I loved so well.
Walt Whitman -
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 -
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth ever afterward resumes its liberty.
Walt Whitman