Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.
— Walt Whitman
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.
We convince by our presence.
The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.
I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.
Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.
I exist as I am, that is enough.
Freedom - to walk free and own no superior.
After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.
The future is no more uncertain than the present.
Be curious, not judgmental.
Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.
There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.
I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.
All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?
Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.
