I dance with the dancers.
The strongest and sweetest song remains to be sung.
Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.
The Past – the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf – the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?
Youth, large, lusty, loving – Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?
There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became...
When the materials are ready, the architects shall appear.
Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves, As souls only understand souls.
Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.
I henceforth tread the world, chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower.
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?
Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.
There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.
I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years; it is middling well as far as it goes – but is that all?
The beautiful uncut hair of graves.
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.