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.
I keep thinking about you every few minutes all day.
Where are your combing seas, your blue water, your rollers, your breakers, your whales, or your waterspouts, and your endless motion, in this bit of a forest, child?
Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over...
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space.
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.
My words itch at your ears till you understand them.
Now I will do nothing but listen to accrue what I hear into this song. To let sounds contribute toward it. I hear the sound I love. The sound of the human voice. I hear all sounds running together.
Oh captain my captain.
I will You, in all, Myself, with promise to never desert you, To which I sign my name.
I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don’t know which Walt Whitman I am.
Unscrew the locks from the doors ! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs !
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?
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.
I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
Those who love each other shall become invincible.
Love, that is day and night – love, that is sun and moon and stars, Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume, no other words but words of love, no other thought but love.