The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
Walt Whitman

The real war will never get in the books.
Walt Whitman

The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.
Walt Whitman

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
Walt Whitman

The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.
Walt Whitman

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
Walt Whitman

There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.
Walt Whitman

There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.
Walt Whitman

There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
Walt Whitman

To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Walt Whitman

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.
Walt Whitman

To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.
Walt Whitman

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.
Walt Whitman

Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.
Walt Whitman

We convince by our presence.
Walt Whitman

Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.
Walt Whitman

When I give, I give myself.
Walt Whitman

Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
Walt Whitman

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
Walt Whitman