Quotes from Walt Whitman

I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric product And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.

Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots.

Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards?  And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,  The making of perfect soldiers.

The chief trait of any given poet is always the spirit he brings to the observation of Humanity and Nature—the mood out of which he contemplates his subjects.

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,   For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet       needed most, I bring,   Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,   The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,   A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,   But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

This is no book; Who touches this, touches a man; (Is it night? Are we here alone?) It is I you hold, and who holds you; I spring from the pages into your arms...

I do not call one greater and one smaller, that which fills it period and place is equal to any.

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less, And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I do not call one greater and one smaller, That which fills its period and place is equal to any.

Come I am determin'd to unbare this broad breast of mine, I have long enough stifled and choked; Emblematic and capricious blades I leave you, now you serve me not, I will say what I have to say by itself, I will sound myself and comrades only, I will never again utter a call only their call, I will raise with it immortal reverberations through the States, I will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and will through the States

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most         spiritual poems; And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality, For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul, and of         immortality.