Walt Whitman — "I am not an advocate for a long life, but for a full one."

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long."

"I am a man of the people, and I shall always be a man of the people."

"The older I grow the more I am confirmed in my optimism, my democracy—not of course denying or excusing what is bad—but it is good, not bad, that is common. Beneath all the froth, illiteracy, worse, t…"

"Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history."

"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."