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It is only the novice in political economy who thinks it is the duty of government to make its citizens happy - government has no such office.

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
Happy
Political
Novice
Government
Novices
Make
Thinks
Thinking
Citizens
Office
Duty
Economy

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I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.
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I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
Walt Whitman
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All the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any.
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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More and more too, the old name absorbs into me. Mannahatta, 'the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.' How fit a name for America's great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!
Walt Whitman
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The mother condemned for a witch and burnt with dry wood, and her children gazing on The hounded slave that flags in the race and leans by the fence, blowing and covered with sweat, The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, The murderous buckshot and the bullets, All these I feel or am.
Walt Whitman
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There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.
Walt Whitman
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I accept reality and dare not question it.
Walt Whitman
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O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! My South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!
Walt Whitman
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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.
Walt Whitman
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Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
Walt Whitman
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The truth is simple. If it was complicated, everyone would understand it.
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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Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death.
Walt Whitman
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The smallest sprout shows there is really no death. And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it.
Walt Whitman
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I hate commas in the wrong places.
Walt Whitman
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Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman
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Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.
Walt Whitman
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I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
Walt Whitman
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Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.
Walt Whitman