Walt Whitman Quotes

No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary performance.

Have you not learn great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?

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 Past – the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf – the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

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.