All Quotes

"In every object, mountain, tree, and star — in every birth and life, As part of each — evolv'd from each — meaning, behind the ostent, A mystic cipher waits infolded."

"After a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials, Accumulations, rous'd love and joy and thought, Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myriads of readers, Coating, compassing, covering — after ages' and ages' encrustations, Then only may these songs reach fruition."

"When the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay he is mine alone; — Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand; And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, Which he will never release until he reconciles the two, And wholly and joyously blends them."

"A voice from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power, With sudden, indescribable blow — towns drown'd — humanity by thousands slain, The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron bridge, Dash'd pell-mell by the blow — yet usher'd life continuing on, (Amid the rest, amid the rushing, whirling, wild debris, A suffering woman saved — a baby safely born!)"

"Although I come and unannounc'd, in horror and in pang, In pouring flood and fire, and wholesale elemental crash, (this voice so solemn, strange,) I too a minister of Deity."

"E'en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime, The blossoms rapidly blooming, sympathy, help, love, From West and East, from South and North and over sea, Its hot-spurr'd hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on; And from within a thought and lesson yet."

"Thou ever-darting Globe! through Space and Air! Thou waters that encompass us! Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep! Thou laws invisible that permeate them and all, Thou that in all, and over all, and through and under all, incessant! Thou! thou! the vital, universal, giant force resistless, sleepless, calm, Holding Humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy, How ill to e'er forget thee!"

"For I too have forgotten, (Wrapt in these little potencies of progress, politics, culture, wealth, inventions, civilization,) Have lost my recognition of your silent ever-swaying power, ye mighty, elemental throes, In which and upon which we float, and every one of us is buoy'd."

"Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest, Allah is all, all,all — immanent in every life and object, May-be at many and many-a-more removes — yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there."

"Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world? Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life; The something never still'd — never entirely gone? the invisible need of every seed? "It is the central urge in every atom, (Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,) To return to its divine source and origin, however distant, Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception."

"Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable masses (even to expose them,) But add, fuse, complete, extend — and celebrate the immortal and the good. Haughty this song, its words and scope, To span vast realms of space and time, Evolution — the cumulative — growths and generations. Begun in ripen'd youth and steadily pursued, Wandering, peering, dallying with all — war, peace, day and night absorbing, Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task, I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age."

"After the cycles, poems, singers, plays, Vaunted Ionia's, India's — Homer, Shakspere — the long, long times' thick dotted roads, areas, The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars — Nature's pulses reap'd, All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration, All ages' plummets dropt to their utmost depths, All human lives, throats, wishes, brains — all experiences' utterance; After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands, Still something not yet told in poesy's voice or print — something lacking, (Who knows? the best yet unexpress'd and lacking.)"

"Grand is the seen, the light, to me — grand are the sky and stars, Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space, And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary; But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those, Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea, (What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?) More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul! More multiform far — more lasting thou than they."

"Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well, Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch, Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn, Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping; Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting, (On earth and in the sea — the universe — the stars there in the heavens,) Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless, And waiting ever more, forever more behind."

"Good-bye my Fancy! Farewell dear mate, dear love! I'm going away, I know not where, Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again, So Good-bye my Fancy."

"Yet let me not be too hasty, Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, become really blended into one; Then if we die we die together, (yes, we'll remain one,) If we go anywhere we'll go together to meet what happens, May-be we'll be better off and blither, and learn something, May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?) May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning — so now finally, Good-bye — and hail! my Fancy."

"I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "LEAVES OF GRASS." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire. I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging…"

"Whitman’s masterpiece, his whole vision, is exactly about this: life as a quest for truth, love, beauty, goodness, and freedom; life as the art of becoming human through the cultivation of the human soul."

"The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave."

"I am glad we have been bombed. Now we can look the East End in the eye."

"Tinkety tonk old fruit, and down with the Nazis."

"At the dinner table, the talk turned to politics. It was in the days before the 'Gang of Four' had allied themselves to the Liberal Party [early 1981]. Queen Elizabeth [The Queen Mother]: I dislike this new socialist party of Woy's [sic]. Host: They're called the Social Democrats, ma'am. Queen Elizabeth: Yes. Well, you don't change socialist just by leaving ist off the end. I say, it's a cheat to start something called the Social Party. I liked the old Labour Party. The best thing is a good old Tory government with a strong Labour opposition."

"Queen Elizabeth: I thought the girls . . . you see, they were marooned in Windsor Castle for most of the war, and I was not sure that they were having a very good education and kind Sachie and Osbert [Sitwell] said they would arrange a poetry evening for us. Such an embarrassment. Osbert was wonderful, as you would expect, and Edith, of course, but then we had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem . . . I think it was called "The Desert". And first the girls got the giggles, and then I did and then even the King. Self: "The Desert", ma'am? Are you sure it wasn't called "The Waste Land? Queen Elizabeth: That's it. I'm afraid we all giggled. Such a gloomy man, looked as though he worked in a bank, and we didn't understand a word. Self: I believe he did once work in a bank."

"Never trust them, never trust them. They can't be trusted."

"He is the only man, since my dear husband died, to have had the effrontery to kiss me on the lips.”"

"We'd have to go self-service."

"We loved him."

"Whilst playing cards, Elizabeth: How are you getting on? You don't look very happy. Lord Salisbury: Oh, Ma'am, I've been left with a horrible queen. Elizabeth: I don't think that's a very good of way of putting it, do you?"

"Was this yours? Oh, could you take it?"

"But I love communists!"

"Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow."

"Wouldn't it be terrible if you'd spent all your life doing everything you were supposed to do, didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't eat things, took lots of exercise, all the things you didn't want to do, and suddenly one day you were run over by a big red bus, and as the wheels were crunching into you you'd say 'Oh my god, I could have got so drunk last night!' That's the way you should live your life, as if tomorrow you'll be run over by a big red bus."

"That's mine!"

"Dear Edwina, she always liked to make a splash."

"I wouldn't if I were you, Noël; they count them before they put them out."

"I'll polish it off myself."

"That is the most dangerous woman in Europe."

"Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man."

"Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle, shows a heart within blood-tinctured of a veined humanity."

"Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers— And that cannot stop their tears."

"I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless."

"Therefore to this dog will I, Tenderly not scornfully, Render praise and favor: With my hand upon his head, Is my benediction said Therefore and for ever."

""Yes," I answered you last night; "No," this morning, Sir, I say. Colours seen by candlelight, Will not look the same by day."

"Unless you can muse in a crowd all day On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behoving and unbehoving; Unless you can die when the dream is past — Oh, never call it loving!"

"What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river."

"The cypress stood up like a church That night we felt our love would hold, And saintly moonlight seemed to search And wash the whole world clean as gold; The olives crystallized the vales' Broad slopes until the hills grew strong: The fireflies and the nightingales Throbbed each to either, flame and song. The nightingales, the nightingales."

"But so fair, She takes the breath of men away Who gaze upon her unaware."

"Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet, From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low, Lest I should fear, and fall, and miss Thee so, Who art not missed by any that entreat."

"And I said in underbreath — All our life is mixed with death, — And who knoweth which is best? And I smiled to think God's greatness Flowed around our incompleteness, — Round our restlessness, His rest."

"I cannot speak In happy tones; the tear drops on my cheek Show I am sad; But I can speak Of grace to suffer with submission meek, Until made glad. I cannot feel That all is well, when dark'ning clouds conceal The shining sun; But then I know God lives and loves; and say, since it is so, "Thy will be done.""