I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,

To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, 

To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment─what is this, then?

I do not ask any more delight─I swim in it, as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;

All things please the soul─but these please the soul well.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
 
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
 
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.
 
 And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
 
 And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

 Be curious, not judgmental.

 Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give, I give myself.
 
 Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.
 
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.
 
Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
 
Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.

Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.
 
I accept reality and dare not question it.
 
I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.
 
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
 
I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.

I celebrate myself and sing myself.
 
I exist as I am, that is enough.

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.

If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.
 
If you done it, it ain’t bragging.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine─and shadows will fall behind you.

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

Nothing endures but personal qualities.
 
Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
 
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.
 
Oh, while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.
 
Re-examine all that you have been told… dismiss that which insults your soul.

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?
 
 The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
 
There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe.
 
To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
 
To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.

Walt Whitman