Favorite Quotations
~
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman: Poetry & Prose
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in anybook, dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem. The art of art... is simplicity. I am wiser, better than I thought. I did not know I held so much greatness. I have learned that to be with those I like is enough. I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars. Whoever degrades another degrades me, and whatever is done or said returns at last to me. As for me, I know of nothing else but miracles. A vast similitude interlocks all. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what anyone supposed, and far luckier. All music is is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments. This is what you should do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God.
"A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books." ~ Walt Whitman