Walt Whitman

Whoever degrades another degrades me, and whatever is done or said at last returns to me.

Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others . . . And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

Re-examine all you have been told . . . Dismiss what insults your Soul.

Freedom -- to walk free and own no superior.

The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words, (In the best poems re-appears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay, Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked.

Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me... Nature was naked, and I was also... Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! - ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness the indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating extasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is--nor what faith or art or health really is.

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.

Sztuka trwa i także ty dopisać możesz wers.

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding; And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.

Oto są myśli ludzi wszystkich czasów i krajów, nie są takie jak moje. Jeśli nie są Twoje tak samo jak moje Są niczym, albo czymś zaraz po niczym. Jeśli nie zawierają wszystkiego, stoją obok niczego. Jeśli nie są zagadką czy rozwiązaniem zagadki, są niczym. Jeśli nie są dokładnie tak bliskie jak odległe, są niczym.

These are the thoughts of men in all ages
and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are
nothing or next to nothing.
If the do not enclose everything they are next to nothing.
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the
riddle they are nothing.
If they are not just as close as they are distant
they are nothing.

Przekonujemy naszą obecnością.

We convince by our presence.

These are the days that must happen to you.