I know perfectly well my own egotism.
Something there is more immortal even than the stars.
At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really knows or feels what Poetry is at its highest, as in the Bible, for instance, or Homer or Shakspeare. I see he covertly or plainly likes best superb verbal polish, or something old or odd.
The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.
Camerado! This is no book; who touches this touches a man.
Have you not learned the most in your life from those with whom you disagreed – those who saw it differently from you?
I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed; I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.
Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death.
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again and ever again, this soiled world.
The President eats dirt and excrement for his daily meals, likes it and tries to force it on The States.
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;.
Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
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.
Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or whether with freedom.
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.
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.
Most works are most beautiful without ornament.
Americans should know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.