Walt Whitman Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes

Song of Myself, 1882 text; this statement begins a sequence of increasingly expansive declarations about the speaker’s place in the universe.

Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself.”

Song of Myself, section 1 in the 1882 Leaves of Grass text, printed page 29 (Wikisource scan page 35). The retained wording “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” is not the 1855 first-edition opening, which reads only “I celebrate myself”; the synchronized source year is therefore corrected from 1855 to 1882.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; the line sits amid Whitman’s celebration of bodily and spiritual acceptance.

Song of Myself, in the passage describing the road each person must travel for themselves.

Near the close of “Song of Myself”; Whitman turns self-expression into a large, physical cry.

Song of Myself, section 21 in the 1882 Leaves of Grass text, printed page 45 (Wikisource scan page 51). The line opens Whitman’s section joining bodily and spiritual experience; this locator is specific to the represented 1882 textual state.

Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 56 (Wikisource scan page 62). The line belongs to the poem’s final movement, later numbered section 52; the 1855 record remains tied to the unnumbered first edition rather than inheriting later section structure.

Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 14 (Wikisource scan page 20). The sentence follows Whitman’s warning against taking things at second or third hand and against looking only through another person’s eyes; the reviewed locator is edition-specific.

Song of Myself, in the passage celebrating the body and the speaker’s delight in his own existence.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; the line follows “I exist as I am, that is enough,” which already exists separately in this collection.

Song of Myself, in Whitman’s catalogue of equal wonders.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; the line belongs to Whitman’s intentionally expansive, bodily-spiritual poetic voice and should be read as poetry rather than literal theological doctrine.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; Whitman immediately compares this unapologetic stance with elementary laws that never apologize.

Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 55 (Wikisource scan page 61). The verbal passage is present there, while this collection retains the more familiar later punctuation/parenthetical presentation. Later editions number this movement section 51; that section number is cross-edition orientation only and is not presented as 1855 structure.

Song of Myself, 1882 Leaves of Grass text on Wikisource; the source continues “and none shall be less familiar than the rest.”

Leaves of Grass (1882), “Song of the Broad-Axe,” section 4; Wikisource 1882 transcription. The line appears after “And the dead advance as much as the living advance” and before Whitman turns from institutions and structures toward the personal qualities he says endure.

Walt Whitman, 'Song of the Open Road,' section 5 in the represented 1882 Leaves of Grass text. 'I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness' follows the speaker's declaration of being loosed from imagined limits. It remains poetic first-person self-discovery rather than empirical psychology.

Leaves of Grass (1860), poem “Walt Whitman’s Caution,” represented on Wikisource from the 1860 edition.