Walt Whitman

“And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”

“The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.”

“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.”

“The future is no more uncertain than the present.”

“The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.”

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

“I may be as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.”

“Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.”

“To have great poets, there must be great audiences.”

“I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake, for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.”

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

“I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.”

“I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.”

“The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.”

“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.”

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.”

“And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.”

“Freedom - to walk free and own no superior.”

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.”

“I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.”

“I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.”

“Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.”

“Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?”

“I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.”