Walt Whitman — "The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem."

"I believe in you, my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other."

"If I had cut sex out I might just as well have cut everything out. The bulk of the pieces might as well have been left unwritten were those lines omitted. The full scheme would no longer exist—it woul…"

"I am for those who believe in loose delights, The woman that arouses a man, the man that arouses a woman."

"I am a poet of the city, and I am a poet of the country."

"I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the U…"