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Everybody is writing, writing, writing - worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of the scribblers - every damned one of us - were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work.

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
Everybody
Chests
Better
Tool
Whole
Sent
Writing
Somewhere
Work
Tools
Scribblers
Every
Poetry
Tribe
Honest
Damned
Worst
Tribes

More quotes by Walt Whitman

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These are the days that must happen to you.
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
Walt Whitman
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I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Walt Whitman
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Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books.
Walt Whitman
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The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
Walt Whitman
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Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her shall I follow.
Walt Whitman
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Lo! body and soul!--this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships The varied and ample land,--the South And the North in the light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.
Walt Whitman
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And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.
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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I exist as I am, that is enough.
Walt Whitman
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Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.
Walt Whitman
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Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus! Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
Walt Whitman
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I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul.
Walt Whitman
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The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
Walt Whitman
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To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
Walt Whitman
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Agonies are one of my changes of garments.
Walt Whitman
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Books are to be called for and supplied on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half-sleep, but in the highest sense an exercise, a gymnastic struggle that the reader is to do something for himself.
Walt Whitman
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I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name.
Walt Whitman
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O captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done. The ship has weather'd every wrack The prize we sought is won The port is near, the bells I hear The people all exulting While follow eyes, the steady keel The vessel grim and daring But Heart! Heart! Heart! O the bleeding drops of red Where on the deck my captain lies Fallen cold and dead.
Walt Whitman
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Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us shedding light over this world can alone help us.
Walt Whitman