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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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Keep your face always toward the sunshine everything could be worse but isn't and so we are justified in being grateful - and shadows everything could be better but isn't and so it is easy to be bitter 'unless you decide to look on the bright side will fall behind you.
Walt Whitman
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Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
Walt Whitman
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O joy of suffering! To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!
Walt Whitman
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The future is no more uncertain than the present.
Walt Whitman
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Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
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.
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Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.
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Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love.
Walt Whitman
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The city sleeps and the country sleeps, the living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, the old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife and these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, and such as it is to be of these more or less I am, and of these one and all I weave the song of myself.
Walt Whitman
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Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Walt Whitman
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I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sound contribute toward me.
Walt Whitman
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This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.
Walt Whitman
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What beauty there is in words what a lurking curious charm in the sound some words.
Walt Whitman
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Something there is more immortal even than the stars.
Walt Whitman
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NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.
Walt Whitman
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Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her that it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
Walt Whitman
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As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.
Walt Whitman
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The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
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The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.
Walt Whitman
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We convince by our presence.
Walt Whitman