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The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

Walt Whitman

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Walt Whitman
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: May 31
Died: 1892
Died: March 26
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Nurse
Poet
Writer
West Hills
New York
Walter Whitman
Growth
Teeming
Present
Sleepers
Dark
Gulf
Past
Retrospect
Time
Shadows
Greatness
Shadow
Infinite
Unfathomed

More quotes by Walt Whitman

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There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
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We arrange our lives-even the best and boldest men and women that exist, just as much as the most limited-with reference to what society conventionally rules and makes right.
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I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.
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not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, The hundred & fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.
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I know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I laugh at what you call dissolution, and I know the amplitude of time.
Walt Whitman
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Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.
Walt Whitman
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There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man's bowels he grows drunk with ecstasy he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die.
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Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.
Walt Whitman
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From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines. Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute. Listening to others, and considering well what they say. Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating. Gently but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
Walt Whitman
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The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
Walt Whitman
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There is no God any more divine than Yourself.
Walt Whitman
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Many a good man I have seen go under.
Walt Whitman
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Clear and sweet is my soul, clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
Walt Whitman
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Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
Walt Whitman
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Perhaps the efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages, have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come, essentially the same - to bring people back from their present strayings and sickly abstractions, to the costless, average, divine, original concrete.
Walt Whitman
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Sail Forth- Steer for the deep waters only. Reckless O soul, exploring. I with thee and thou with me. For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared go. And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all.
Walt Whitman
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Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.
Walt Whitman
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I am large, I contain multitudes
Walt Whitman
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I do not seek good fortune - I am good fortune!
Walt Whitman
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Long have you timidly waded Holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, Rise again, nod to me, shout, And laughingly dash with your hair.
Walt Whitman