Quote

My rule has been, so far as I could have any rule (I could have no cast-iron rule) - my rule has been, to write what I have to say the best way I can - then lay it aside - taking it up again after some time and reading it afresh - the mind new to it. If there's no jar in the new reading, well and good - that's sufficient for me.

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
Way
Taking
Jars
Good
Reading
Aside
Time
Write
Iron
Best
Cast
Wells
Casts
Well
Sufficient
Writing
Lays
Mind
Rule
Afresh

More quotes by 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 ecstasy is so short but the forgetting is so long.
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I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.
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We convince by our presence.
Walt Whitman
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The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.
Walt Whitman
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Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!
Walt Whitman
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Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.
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My call is the call of battle- I nourish active rebellion/ He going with me must go well armed.
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The beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Walt Whitman
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I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be.
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Thought Of equality- as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself- as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.
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The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.
Walt Whitman
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Ah little recks the laborer, How near his work is holding him to God, The loving Laborer through space and time
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Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.
Walt Whitman
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I was in the midst of it all - saw war where war is worst - not on the battlefields, no - in the hospitals ... there I mixed with it: and now I say God damn the wars - allw ars: God damn every war: God damn 'em! God damn 'em!
Walt Whitman
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I do not doubt but the majest and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse than I have supposed.
Walt Whitman
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Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Walt Whitman
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Produce great men, the rest follows.
Walt Whitman
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Over all the sky - the sky! Far, far out of reach, studded with eternal stars.
Walt Whitman
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TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little, Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-ward resumes its liberty.
Walt Whitman