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20 quotes
SortEditorial Year Length
Person·Walt Whitman✕clear
Poem

When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer · 1867
★ 7.3
Poem

I think I could turn and live ahile with te animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, 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.

Walt Whitman
Song of Myself · 1855
★ 3.9