You don’t have to like poetry to like Walt Whitman. You don’t even have to know of Walt Whitman to know of his poetry. Does the phrase, “O captain, my captain!” mean anything to you? If so, then you might know more about him than you think.
In the canon of American literature, Whitman holds a singular place. Born to a struggling working-class family in 1819, Long Island, NY, he left school at age 11 to help support his family. Eventually, he became a teacher and a journalist who documented his travels across the growing United States. A prolific writer, Whitman is best known for Leaves of Grass, his first book of poems originally published in 1855.
Highly recognized as one of the defining poets of the United States, Whitman used his prose to chronicle the burgeoning nation in the 19th century. He described the vast, new lands of the West, the plight of the working class and the bloody battlefields of the Civil War, painting a picture of the nation that has earned him the title of America’s national poet.
Before his death on March 26, 1892, he published six editions of Leaves of Grass, each time adding poems. Here are 75 Walt Whitman quotes—from his published works—about love, life, death and freedom to remember him by.
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75 Best Walt Whitman Quotes
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- “I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for others’ sakes” — from “A Woman Waits for Me”
- “Sex contains all.” — “A Woman Waits for Me”
- “Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself” — “A Woman Waits for Me”
- “I am he that aches with amorous love; / Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter? / So the Body of me, to all I meet, or know.” — “I am He That Aches with Love.”
- “Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem” — “Leaves of Grass (1867)”
- “I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.” — “Leaves of Grass (1867)”
- “But now I think there is no unreturn’d love—the pay is certain, one way or another.” — “Sometimes With One I Love”
- “Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.” — “Song of Myself”
- “I believe in the flesh and the appetites. / Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles and each part and tag of me is a miracle.” — “Song of Myself”
- “If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it.” — “Song of Myself”
- “Wherever are men like me, are our lusty, lurking, masculine poems.” — “Spontaneous Me”
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Walt Whitman Quotes on Freedom
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- “Resist much, obey little” — “Walt Whitman’s Caution”
- “Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons, It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.” — “Song of the Open Road”
- “When liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go, It waits for all the rest to go—it is the last.” — “To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire”
- “Not a grave of the murder’d for freedom, but grows seed for freedom, in its turn to bear seed.” — “Europe”
- “Gorgeous clouds of the sun-set! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me” — “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
- “Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved. / Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty.” — “Walt Whitman’s Caution”
- “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done.” — “O Captain! My Captain!”
- “The President is there in the White House for you—it is not you who are here for him” — “To Workingmen”
- “Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.“ — “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun”
- “The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers” — “Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice“
- “Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet“ — “Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice“
- “That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial dew, / For the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North“ — “Ashes of Soldiers“
- “What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk and own no superior?” — “Laws for Creations”
- “I Dream’d in a dream, / I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth. / I dream’d that was the new City of Friends.” — “I Dreamed in a Dream”
- “I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies.” — “For You O Democracy”
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Walt Whitman Quotes on Women
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- “Have I not said that womanhood involves all? / Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood?” — “Leaves of Grass (1867)”
- “A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity—but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman.” — “Leaves of Grass (1867)”
- “You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul!” — “I Sing the Body Electric”
- “The female contains all qualities, and tempers them—she is in her place, she moves with perfect balance” — “I Sing the Body Electric”
- “The man’s body is sacred, and the woman’s body is sacred—it is no matter who.” — “I Sing the Body Electric”
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Walt Whitman Quotes on Life
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- “The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? / Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity; / That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.” — “O Me! O Life!”
- “I exist as I am, that is enough” — “Song of Myself”
- “Let others dispose of questions—I dispose of nothing—I arouse unanswerable questions.” — “Leaves of Grass (1867)”
- “I perceive I have no time to lose.” — “Leaves of Grass (1867)”
- “It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall. The dark threw patches down upon me also.” — “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
- “Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, / Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd” — “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
- “We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also” — “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
- “Wonderful to depart; / Wonderful to be here!” — “Song at Sunset”
- “I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise.” — “Song of Myself”
- “In all people I see myself, non more and none one a barley-corn less, / And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.” — “Song of Myself”
- “None have done justice to you—you have not done justice to yourself.” — “Leaves of Grass (1867)”
- “I will go celebrate anything I see or am, And sing and laugh, and deny nothing.” — “Leaves of Grass”
- “O the joy of my spirit—it is uncaged—it darts like lightning!” — “A Song of Joys”
- “O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods.” — “A Song of Joys”
- “I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough” — “I Sing the Body Electric”
- “If no other in the world be aware, I sit content, / And if each and all be aware I sit content.” — “Song of Myself”
- “What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? / Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent.” — “Song of Myself”
- “Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.” — “The Sleepers”
- “The soul is always beautiful” — “The Sleepers”
- “Each of us inevitable, Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth.” — “Salut Au Monde”
- “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” — “Song of Myself”
- “I am larger than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness” — “Song of the Open Road”
- “Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling“ — “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun”
- “Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good-fortune” — “Song of the Open Road”
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Walt Whitman Quotes on Death
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- “I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, I plant so lovingly now.” — “A Woman Waits for Me”
- “Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal” — Leaves of Grass (1867)
- “Still here I carry my old delicious burdens; / I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go.” — “Song of the Open Road”
- “I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.” — “Song of the Open Road”
- “I believe of all those billions of men and women that fill’d the unnamed lands, every one exists this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us.” — “Unnamed Lands”
- “Give me exhaustless—make me a fountain. That I exhale love from me wherever I go, For the same of all dead soldiers.” — “Hymn of Dead Soldiers”
- “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” — “Song of Myself”
- “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.” — “Song of Myself”
- “This dust was once the man” — “This Dust was Once the Man”
- “Phantoms of countless lost, / Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions, / Follow me ever—desert me not while I live.” — “Ashes of Soldiers”
- “Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they are shed out of you.” — “To Workingmen”
- “Carry me when you go forth over land or sea” — “Whoever You Are, Holding Me Now in Hand”
- “I have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have I sung, and the song of life and death.“ — “So Long!”
- “I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.” — “So Long!”
- “I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, / And I become the other dreamers” — “The Sleepers”
- “Again we wander, we love, we separate again.” — “Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City”
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Walt Whitman Quotes on Poetry
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- “All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems” — “Song of the Answerer”
- “The words of the true poems give you more than poems, / They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and every thing else” — “Song of the Answerer”
- “Unfolded only out of the inimitable poem of the woman, can come the poems of man— (only thence have my poems come;)” — “Leaves of Grass (1867)”
- “Through me forbidden voices. / Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil. / Voices indifferent by me clarified and transfigur’d.” — “Song of Myself”
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Source:
- The Walt Whitman Archive, edited by Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, and Kenneth M. Price.
