The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions.
-- Walt Whitman
I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.
-- Walt Whitman
When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs, And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth, Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth, And the infidel come into full possession.
-- Walt Whitman
Talk not so much, then, young artist, of the great old masters, who but painted and chisell
-- Walt Whitman
It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess. Who would not mourn that an ample palace, of surpassingly graceful architecture, fill
-- Walt Whitman
Re-examine all you have been told...
Dismiss what insults your Soul.
-- Walt Whitman
I am for those that have never been master'd,
For men and women whose tempers have never been master'd,
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
-- Walt Whitman
A breed whose proof is in time and deeds,
What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections,
We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,
We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves
-- Walt Whitman
All is eligible to all,
All is for individuals, all is for you,
No condition is prohibited, not God's or any.
-- Walt Whitman
If we are lost, no victor else has destroy'd us,
It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.
-- Walt Whitman
Piety and conformity to them that like,
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like,
I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations,
Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!
-- Walt Whitman
Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?
Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?
-- Walt Whitman
To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account,
That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of plants.
-- Walt Whitman
For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,
For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders,
The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.
-- Walt Whitman
Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,
They live in the feelings of young men and the best women,
(Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always ready to fall for Liberty.)
-- Walt Whitman
For the great Idea,
That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets.
-- Walt Whitman
Songs of stern defiance ever ready,
Songs of the rapid arming and the march,
The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag we know,
Warlike flag of the great Idea.
-- Walt Whitman
Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them, and assumed the poems and processes of Democracy?
Are you faithful to things? do you teach what the land and sea, the bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?
Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contentions? Are you very strong? are you really of the whole People?
Are you not of some coterie? Some school or mere religion?
Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? Animating now to life itself?
-- Walt Whitman
Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from poems pass away,
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes…
-- Walt Whitman
In the need of songs, philosophy, an appropriate native grand-opera, shipcraft, any craft,
He or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original practical example.
-- Walt Whitman
I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of myself,
Rejecting none, permitting all.
-- Walt Whitman
Underneath all, individuals,
I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals
-- Walt Whitman
I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth,
Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.
-- Walt Whitman
Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
-- Walt Whitman
Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves only.
-- Walt Whitman
Produce great Persons, the rest follows.
-- Walt Whitman
O days of the future I believe in you — I isolate myself for your sake
-- Walt Whitman
The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
-- Walt Whitman
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