Why, Oscar, it always seems to me that the fellow who makes a dead set at beauty by itself is in a bad way. My idea is that beauty is a result, not an abstraction. (to Oscar Wilde)
Walt Whitman Quotes
America’s game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere – belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.
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.
To have great poets there must be great audiences too.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Of all the days of the war, there are two especially I can never forget. Those were the days following the news, in New York and Brooklyn, of that first Bull Run defeat, and the day of Abraham Lincoln’s death. I was home in Brooklyn on both occasions. The day of the murder we heard […]
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty […]
The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
I shall use America and democracy as convertible terms.
These states are the amplest poem, Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations, Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night, Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars… Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves.
