β
These are all direct quotes, except every time they use a curse word, I'm going to use the name of a famous American poet:
'You Walt Whitman-ing, Edna St. Vincent Millay! Go Emily Dickinson your mom!'
'Thanks for the advice, you pathetic piece of E.E. Cummings, but I think I'm gonna pass.'
'You Robert Frost-ing Nikki Giovanni! Get a life, nerd. You're a virgin.'
'Hey bro, you need to go outside and get some fresh air into you. Or a girlfriend.'
I need to get a girlfriend into me? I think that shows a fundamental lack of comprehension about how babies are made.
β
β
John Green
β
When I Read the Book"
When I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
β
β
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
β
Walt Whitman: βHold me up, I want to shit.
β
β
Robert Schnakenberg (Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You about Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights)
β
I sometimes find myself lost in the paradoxes of place, race, and religion. Oklahoma seems to embody Walt Whitman's famous lines: 'Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.
β
β
Russell Cobb (The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America's Weirdest State)
β
When I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a manβs life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught my life,
Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
β
β
Walt Whitman
β
When I Read the Book When I read the book, the biography famous,
Β And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?
Β And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
Β (As if any man really knew aught of my life,
Β Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,
Β Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
Β I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
β
β
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
β
I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I watered it in fears, Night and morning with my tears; And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright. And my foe beheld it shine. And he knew that it was mine, And into my garden stole When the night had veiled the pole; In the morning glad I see My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
β
β
Poetry House (150 Most Famous Poems: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman and many more)
β
The very idea of wagon travel across the plains might have been indefinitely delayed had it not been for Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, a dreamy but persistent evangelist from the Finger Lakes of New York, who in 1836 became the first white woman to cross the Rockies. Narcissa Whitman is largely forgotten today, but her impact on American history was enormous, and for a time she was one of the most famous women in antebellum America.
β
β
Rinker Buck (The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey)
β
I'd like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me; I'd like to be the help that you've been always glad to be; I'd like to mean as much to you each minute of the day As you have meant, old friend of mine, to me along the way. I'd like to do the big things and the splendid things for you, To brush the gray out of your skies and leave them only blue; I'd like to say the kindly things that I so oft have heard, And feel that I could rouse your soul the way that mine you've stirred. I'd like to give back the joy that you have given me, Yet that were wishing you a need I hope will never be; I'd like to make you feel as rich as I, who travel on Undaunted in the darkest hours with you to lean upon. I'm wishing at this Christmas time that I could but repay A portion of the gladness that you've strewn along the way; And could I have one wish this year, this only would it be: I'd like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me.
β
β
Poetry House (150 Most Famous Poems: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman and many more)
β
Walt Whitman was a famous poet. But since his words bring me comfort, sure, letβs go with that. Heβs a friend, too.
β
β
Wendy Wan-Long Shang (The Secret Battle of Evan Pao)
β
What's your name?" he asked.
She'd turned to him with a deep frown, instantly terrifying him. About to turn to escape back into the bookshop, Walt was stopped by her shrug.
"Cora."
"That's a funny name."
"It isn't, actually." Cora's frown deepened. She pulled herself up to her full height of four foot three inches. 'Officially my name is Cori, but Grandma calls me Cora. I'm named in honor of Gerty Cori, the first woman winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine. I bet you didn't know that."
"No," Walt admitted, embarrassed. "I didn't."
"What's your name?"
"Walt," he offered quietly, expecting her to retort that his was an even sillier name, but she didn't.
"After the scientist?"
Walt frowned, thrown. "What scientist?"
Cora shrugged. "Maybe Luis Walter Alvarez or Walter Reed, but... actually Walter Sutton is the most famous. He invented a theory about chromosomes and the Mendelian laws of inheritance." Cora let slip a little smile of satisfaction at the blank look on the boy's face. "Or maybe Walter Lewis-"
"No," Walt interrupted, "I've never heard of any of them."
"Oh." Cora folded her arms and tilted her nose upward. "Then who are you named after?" she asked, as if this was a given.
"Walt Whitman," he retorted. "The poet.
β
β
Menna Van Praag (The Dress Shop of Dreams)
β
Whitman would be appalled in the 1850s when holiday celebrations began to be mass-oriented spectacles manipulated by professionals. One of his most famous poetic linesββ I celebrate myselfββcan be taken, on one level, as an attempt to restore the idea of celebration, which was fast becoming coldly manipulative, to the personal and genuinely celebratory.
β
β
David S. Reynolds (Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography)
β
She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me,' cried The Lady of Shalott.
β
β
Poetry House (150 Most Famous Poems: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman and many more)