Walt Whitman

“Copulation is no more foul to me than death is.”

“I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.”

“What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”

“Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious—surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.”

“Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.”

“I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”

“If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”

“Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems”

“Resist much, obey little.”

“And I or you pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth.”

“poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you”

“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”

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

“This is the city, and I am one of the citizens/Whatever interests the rest interests me”

“Peace is always beautiful.”