21 Quotes About Walt-whitman

Behold the day-break!I awaken you by sitting on your chest and purring in your face,I stir you with muscular paw-prods, I rouse you with toe-bites,Walt, you have slept enough, why don't you get up?"(From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

The noisy jay swoops by and reviles me, he complains of my meow and my malingering.I too am not a bit subdued, I too am uncontrollable,I sound my splenetic yowl over the roof of the house."(From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

Just because you have information, doesn't mean you're informed.

No you don't", she answers, and she is right. She can see it in my face- I understand now that I can't be her and she can't be me. Maybe Whitman had a gift I don't have. But as for me: I must ask the wounded man where he is hurt, because I cannot become the wounded man. The only wounded man I can be is me.

That poem is so damned long. You'd think old Walt could have taken a line or two to tell us how to unscrew the door from its jamb.

And inevitably there always crept into our discussions the figure of Whitman, that one lone figure which America has produced in the course of her brief life. In Whitman the whole American scene comes to life, her past and her future, her birth and her death. Whatever there is of value in America Whitman has expressed, and there is nothing more to be said.

You know me now. I’m only good at beginnings.

When we read certain portions of “Leaves of Grass” we seem to see a vast phalanx of Great Companions passing for ever along the cosmic roads, stalwart Pioneers of the Universe. There are superb young men, athletic girls, splendid and savage old men—for the weak seem to have perished by the roadside.

Walt Whitman was not the first to observe that we are all naked under our clothes, but he was one of the greatest, if not the first, to preach a gospel of nudity.