Walt Whitman Quotes

If not bliss, ignorance can at least be fun.

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.

To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy, than to attempt to fully understand.

When I was a kid my parents used to tell me, "Emo, don't go near the cellar door!" One day when they were away, I went up to the cellar door. And I pushed it and walked through and saw strange, wonderful things, things I had never seen before, like... trees. Grass. Flowers. The sun... that was nice... the sun.

Beauty has nothing to do with possession. If possession and beauty must go together, then we are lost souls. A beautiful flower is not to be possessed, it's there to be beheld. … It's there for your pleasure.

If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower.

The flower which we do not pluck is the only one which never loses its beauty or its fragrance.

I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.

The breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air than in the hand.

Fun stands for finally understnding nothing. And that's what's fun about fun, you don't have to get it.

If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.

I ought not to have listened to her,' he confided to me one day. 'One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace.

Yes, the idiot is indeed the good man, but only because he doesn't know any better.

Butterflies...flowers that fly and all but sing.

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it

'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'

All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story.

Traveler is my only companion; I may also say my pleasure. He and I, whenever practicable, wander out in the mountains and enjoy sweet confidence.

The world was so beautiful when regarded like this, without searching, so simply, in such a childlike way. Moons and stas were beautiful, beautiful were bank and stream, forest and rocks, goat and gold-bug, flower and butterfly. So lovely, so delightful to go through the world this way, so like a child, awake, open to what is near, without distrust.

The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly

Good heavens, of what un costly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.

Beginnings start without shade,Thinner than minnows.The live grass whirls with the sun,Feet run over the simple stones,There's time enough.Behold, in the lout's eye, love.

These are the things I prize And hold of dearest worth: Light of the sapphire skies, Peace of the silent hills, Shelter of the forests, comfort of the grass, Music of birds, murmur of little rills, Shadows of cloud that swiftly pass, And, after showers, The smell of flowers And of the good brown earth,- And best of all, along the way, friendship and mirth.

He who lives as children live - who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance - remains childlike.

My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was – liberty.