top of page
Explore more quotes by Walt Whitman

"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?"

"The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to your nevertheless,And filter and fibre your blood.Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,Missing me one place, search another,I stop somewhere waiting for you."

"Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."

"This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning, This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face, This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again. 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. Do you take it I would astonish? Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the woods? Do I astonish more than they? This hour I tell things in confidence, I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you."
Exlpore more People quotes

"The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone."

"It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other."

"There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness."

"Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new."

"We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like."

"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."

"People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect."
bottom of page