Browse 12 quotations connecting Walt Whitman with Self Reliance, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Sources represented here include Song of Myself, Song of the Open Road, Walt Whitman's Caution.
“I know I am solid and sound.”
Whitman’s speaker declares an underlying soundness that is not presented as a verdict from other people, making self-assurance part of the poem’s larger democratic self.
Song of Myself, 1882 text; this statement begins a sequence of increasingly expansive declarations about the speaker’s place in the universe.
“I exist as I am, that is enough.”
Whitman asserts existence itself before performance or approval, making the line useful for thinking about intrinsic worth.
Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself.”
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”
The opening celebrates the self without separating it from the wider world that the poem later embraces.
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.
“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.”
Other people can accompany or advise, but some decisions and development remain personally lived responsibilities.
Song of Myself, in the passage describing the road each person must travel for themselves.
“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
The exuberant image celebrates unapologetic self-expression and a voice that refuses to become small merely to fit social expectations.
Near the close of “Song of Myself”; Whitman turns self-expression into a large, physical cry.
“You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.”
Whitman urges the reader not to borrow even his own viewpoint wholesale: other voices can be heard, but judgment still has to be worked through personally rather than accepted second-hand.
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.
“I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.”
Whitman’s exuberant self-acceptance is deliberately bodily and unapologetic, presenting delight in one’s own existence as something broader than vanity or external approval.
Song of Myself, in the passage celebrating the body and the speaker’s delight in his own existence.
“I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood.”
The speaker refuses to make dignity depend on continuous defense or explanation, separating inward assurance from the need to win every outside judgment.
Song of Myself, 1882 text; Whitman immediately compares this unapologetic stance with elementary laws that never apologize.
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
Contradiction is treated as part of a large human self rather than automatic proof of failure or hypocrisy.
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.
“Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean, not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile.”
Whitman rejects the division of the person into acceptable and shameful fragments, extending his democratic imagination to the body and to ordinary human embodiment.
Song of Myself, 1882 Leaves of Grass text on Wikisource; the source continues “and none shall be less familiar than the rest.”
“I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.”
Whitman describes self-discovery as expansion rather than invention: experience reveals capacities and goodness that were already present but insufficiently recognized.
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.
“Resist much, obey little.”
The compact command favors independent judgment over reflexive obedience, especially when authority conflicts with conscience or freedom.
Leaves of Grass (1860), poem “Walt Whitman’s Caution,” represented on Wikisource from the 1860 edition.
