Walt Whitman

In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection.

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

Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth.

I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, "Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country—I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes …

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

In the faces of men and women I see God.

I have no mockings or arguments; I witness and wait.

I loafe and invite my soul.

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

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

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

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

If the United States haven't 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 …

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

Some people are so much sunlight to the square inch. I am still bathing in the cheer he radiated.

In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball ... Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave …

I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.

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.