60 Walt Whitman Quotes To Motivate And Encourage You 2024

1. “Resist much, obey little.”― Walt Whitman

2. “What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”― Walt Whitman

3. “Do I contradict myself?

4. Very well then I contradict myself,

5. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”― Walt Whitman

6. “This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”― Walt Whitman

7. “Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”― Walt Whitman

8. “We were together. I forget the rest.”― Walt Whitman

9. “Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”― Walt Whitman

10. “I have learned that to be with those I like is enough”― Walt Whitman

11. “Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”― Walt Whitman

12. “Be curious, not judgmental.”― Walt Whitman

13. “Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour.”― Walt Whitman

14. “I am large, I contain multitudes”― Walt Whitman

15. “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”― Walt Whitman

16. “Do anything, but let it produce joy.”― Walt Whitman

17. “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering… these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love… these are what we stay alive for.”― Walt Whitman

18. “I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best. ”― Walt Whitman

19. “I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.”― Walt Whitman

20. “I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.”― Walt Whitman

21. “Peace is always beautiful.”― Walt Whitman

22. “Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.”― Walt Whitman

23. “And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”― Walt Whitman

24. “I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”― Walt Whitman

25. “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”― Walt Whitman

26. “These are the days that must happen to you.”― Walt Whitman

27. “Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.”― Walt Whitman

28. “Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.”― Walt Whitman

29. “God is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his impossible standards.”― Walt Whitman

30. “The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”― Walt Whitman

31. “Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you/ That you may be my poem/ I whisper with my lips close to your ear/ I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.”― Walt Whitman

32. “Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.”― Walt Whitman

33. “If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”― Walt Whitman

34. “Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.”― Walt Whitman

35. “And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles”― Walt Whitman

36. “If you done it, it ain’t bragging.”― Walt Whitman

37. “Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.”― Walt Whitman

38. “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

39. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”― Walt Whitman

40. “Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious—surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench’d, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.” ― Walt Whitman

41. “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable” ― Walt Whitman

42. I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.”― Walt Whitman

43. “I am satisfied … I see, dance, laugh, sing.”― Walt Whitman

44. “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

45. And what I assume you shall assume,

46. For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”― Walt Whitman

47. “I exist as I am, that is enough.”― Walt Whitman

48. “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”― Walt Whitman

49. “In the faces of men and women, I see God.”― Walt Whitman

50. “Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”― Walt Whitman

51. “I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”― Walt Whitman

52. “Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.”― Walt Whitman

53. “Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.”― Walt Whitman

54. “The real war will never get in the books.”― Walt Whitman

55. “I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness. All seems beautiful to me. Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me; Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.”― Walt Whitman

56. “I tramp a perpetual journey.”― Walt Whitman

57. “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”― Walt Whitman

58. “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

59. And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”― Walt Whitman

60. “A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”― Walt Whitman