This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
That [haunting fear of being wrong] is the fate of those who break without knowing clearly that Communism is wrong because something else is right, because to the challenge: God or Man?, they continue to give the answer: Man… They are witnesses against something; they have ceased to be witnesses for anything.
Awe | Important | Life | Life | Light | Men | Reverence | Wonder | World |
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
Always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
First, O songs, for a prelude, lightly strike on the stretch'd tympanum, pride and joy in my city, how she led the rest to arms—how she gave the cue, how at once with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment, she sprang; (O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless! O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!) How you sprang! how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent hand; how your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard in their stead; how you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude songs of soldiers,) How Manhattan drum-taps led.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.
Day |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, longer than sun or any revolving satellite, or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Ar,’d year! Year of the struggle! No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year! Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano; but as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on your shoulder, with well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands—with a knife in the belt at your side, as I heard you shouting loud—your sonorous voice ringing across the continent; your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great cities.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nonetheless and filter and fibre your blood.
Argument | Custom | God | Knowledge | Little | Men | Mind | Music | Peace | Promise | Spirit | God |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
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. Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, how you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turned over upon me, and parted the shirt from my bosom bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stripped heart, and reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet. Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, and I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, and I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, and that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, and that a kelson of the creation is love, and limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, and brown ants in the little wells beneath them, and mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elder, mullein and pokeweed.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
I never could explain why I love anybody, or anything.
Mind |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball...Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms...the game of ball is glorious.
Walt Kelley, fully Walter Crawford "Walt" Kelly, Jr.
The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, it coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, but I shall be good health to your nevertheless, and filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, missing me one place, search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Your true soul and body appear before me. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem, I whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. O I have been dilatory and dumb, I should have made my way straight to you long ago, I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you. I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, none has understood you, but I understand you, none has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself, none but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you, none but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you, I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits instrinsically in yourself. O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life, your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time. I pursue you where none else has pursued you. Conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me. I give nothing to anyone except I give the like carefully to you. These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they, these furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! Whoever degrades another degrades me, and whatever is done or said returns at last to me. Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index.
Indifference | Life | Life | Looks | Man | People | Will | Witness | Woman | Loss | Old |