Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.”
- Source
- Song of the Open Road
- Date
- 1856
Meaning of “I am larger, better than I thought, I…”
Whitman describes self-discovery as expansion rather than invention: experience reveals capacities and goodness that were already present but insufficiently recognized.
Where does it come from?
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.
