Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Great is Youth--equally great is Old Age--great are Day and Night. Great is Wealth--great is Poverty--great is Expression-great is Silence.
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!
I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.
The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.
It is only the novice in political economy who thinks it is the duty of government to make its citizens happy - government has no such office.
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?
I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in intoxication.
I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best! I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.
Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality.
I know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I laugh at what you call dissolution, and I know the amplitude of time.
Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.
In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed of perfection.
Oh, to be alive in such an age, when miracles are everywhere, and every inch of common air throbs a tremendous prophecy, of greater marvels yet to be.
The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.
A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking.
There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.
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?
I Think it is lost.....but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost . The body sluggish, aged, cold, the ember left from earlier fires shall duly flame again.
Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.
Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem.
When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, My breath will not be obedient to its organs, I become a dumb man.
My ties and ballasts leave me - I travel - I sail - My elbows rest in the sea-gaps. I skirt the sierras. My palms cover continents - I am afoot with my vision.
Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.
To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim - the rocks - the motion of the waves - the ships, with men in them, what stranger miracles are there?
Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.
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.
Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of a man.
O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.
I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete, The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.
For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, Strong and content I travel the open road.
O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?
The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
To drive free, to love free, to court destruction with taunts, to feed the remainder of life with one hour of fullness and freedom - one brief hour of madness and joy.
I inhale great draught of space...the east and west are mine...and the north and south are mine...I am grandeur than I thought...I did not know i held so much goodness.
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?
Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams, Now I wash the gum from your eyes, You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life
I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is.
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd / And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, / I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding; And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.
Thought Of equality- as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself- as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.
All the past we leave behind; We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world, Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O Pioneers!
Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing Night! Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars! Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!
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.
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?
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
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery here we stand.