This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?
Joy | Life | Life | Love | Soul | Will | Words | Intellect |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
A million people—manners free and superb— open voices—hospitality—the most courageous and friendly young men; the free city! no slaves! no owners of slaves! The beautiful city! the city of hurried and sparkling waters! The city of spires and masts! The city nested in bays! my city! The city of such women, I am mad to be with them! I will return after death to be with them! The city of such young men, I swear I cannot live happy, without I often go talk, walk, eat, drink, sleep, with them!
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me, whispering I love you, before long I die, I have travel'd a long way merely to look on you to touch you, for I could not die till I once look'd on you, for I fear'd I might afterward lose you. Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe, return in peace to the ocean my love, I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated, behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect! But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us, as for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever; be not impatient--a little space--know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land, every day at sundown for your dear sake my love.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Oh, to be alive in such an age, when miracles are everywhere, and every inch of common air throbs a tremendous prophecy, of greater marvels yet to be.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals… they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied… not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
Words |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
A shock electric—the night sustain'd it; till with ominous hum, our hive at day-break, pour'd out its myriads.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
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 ecstasy 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.
Words | Understand |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
The world below the brine, forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
Words |
The purpose of preaching and of worship is transformation.
Contradiction | Words | Work |
Walter Hagen, fully Sir Walter Charles Hagen
WALTER HAGEN: Tell me Bobby why do you play this game? ROBERT TYRE JONES, JR.: I play because I love it.
Words |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
What shall I give? and which are my miracles? Realism is mine--my miracles--Take freely,take without end--I offer them to you wherever your feet can carry you or your eyes reach. Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, or stand under trees in the woods, or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, or sit at the table at dinner with my mother, or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, or animals feeding in the fields, or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, or the wonderfulness of the sundown--or of stars shining so quiet and bright, or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best--mechanics, boatmen, farmers, or among the savants--or to the _soiree_--or to the opera. Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, or behold children at their sports, or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, or my own eyes and figure in the glass; obese, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, ohe whole referring--yet each distinct and in its place. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every inch of space is a miracle, every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, all these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. To me the sea is a continual miracle; the fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships, with men in them, what stranger miracles are there?
Words |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.
Words |
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
In high technology cultures today, everyone lives each day in a frame of abstract computed time enforced by millions of printed calendars, clock, and watches. In twelfth-century England there were no clocks or watches or wall or desk calendars.
Computer | Experience | Internet | Reason | Receive | Words |
Walter Sickert, fully Walter Richard Sickert
Perhaps the importance that we must attach to the achievement of an artist or a group of artists may properly be measured by the answer to the following question: Have they so wrought that it will be impossible henceforth, for those who follow, ever again to act as if they had not existed?