Walt Whitman

"I say the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their religion."

"I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion’s sake."

"Nothing can happen more beautiful than death."

"We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impressd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States has been fashiond from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only — which is a very great mistake."

"I find Im a good deal more of a socialist than I thought I was: maybe not technically, politically, so, but intrinsically, in my meanings."

"I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love."

"None has begun to think how divine he himself is and how certain the future is."

"The paths to the house I seek to make, But leave to those to come the house itself."

"The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman."

"Over all the sky—the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the eternal stars."

"Lo! the moon ascending! Up from the East, the silvery round moon; Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon; Immense and silent moon."

"If the United States havent grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere — probably more than the rest of the world combined. Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations — many rare combinations. To have great poets, there must be great audiences too."