"I have just this moment heard from the front — there is nothing yet of a movement, but each side is continually on the alert, expecting something to happen. O Mother, to think that we are to have here soon what I have seen so many times, the awful loads and trains and boatloads of poor, bloody, and pale and wounded young men again — for that is what we certainly will, and before very long. I see all the little signs, getting ready in the hospitals, etc.; it is dreadful when one thinks about it. I sometimes think over the sights I have myself seen: the arrival of the wounded after a battle, and the scenes on the field, too, and I can hardly believe my own recollections. What an awful thing war is! Mother, it seems not men but a lot of devils and butchers butchering each other."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesPoets from the United StatesJournalists from the United States19th-century poets from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Letter to his mother (22 March 1864)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Walt Whitman
1819 – 1892
US-amerikanischer Dichter
91 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Walt Whitman →
Related Quotes
"...the rights of them the others are down upon, Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised, Fog in the air, be…"
"In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of you…"
"The paths to the house I seek to make, But leave to those to come the house itself."
"It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the gre…"
"I find I'm a good deal more of a socialist than I thought I was: maybe not technically, politically, so, but intrinsi…"
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, …"
"Now obey thy cherished secret wish, Embrace thy friends—leave all in order; To port and hawser's tie no more returnin…"
"Society waits unformed and is between things ended and things begun."
"Whitman is a "bad influence"; that is, he cannot be imitated."
"Talk not so much, then, young artist, of the great old masters, who but painted and chisell'd. Study not only their p…"