Walt Whitman Quotes

I'm more interested in life than life-style. Life-style means you have to drive a certain car.

In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding unless someone explains it to you.

I was warmed by the sun, rocked by the winds and sheltered by the trees as other Indian babes. I was living peaceably when people began to speak bad of me. Now I can eat well, sleep well and be glad. I can go everywhere with a good feeling.

A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.

For the bliss of the animals lies in this, that, on their lower level, they shadow the bliss of those--few at any moment on the earth--who do not 'look before and after, and pine for what is not,' but live in the holy carelessness of the eternal now.

The shortest road to wealth lies in the contempt of wealth.

Animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.

We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long.

Here, I think, lies our real dilemma. Probably we cannot, certainly we shall not, retrace our steps. We are tamed animals (some with kind, some with cruel, masters) and should probably starve if we got out of our cage. That is one horn of the dilemma. But in an increasingly planned society, how much of what I value can survive? That is the other horn.

Away from the tumult of motor and mill I want to be care-free; I want to be still! I'm weary of doing things; weary of words I want to be one with the blossoms and birds.

With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?

Truly, whoever possesses little is that much less possessed: praised be a little poverty!

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free.

Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.

No benefit is more constant than simplicity; no happiness more constant than peace.

Money talks, but it don't sing and dance, and it don't walk. And long as I can have you here with me, I'd much rather be, forever in blue jeans.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long.

There is great freedom in simplicity of living.

There is one advantage to having nothing, it never needs repair.

I’m not interested in changing either my suit or my car or whatever with every change in fashion. That’s irrelevant. I don’t judge myself or my friends by their fashions. Of course, I don’t approve of people who are sloppy and unnecessarily shabby or dishevelled… But I’m not impressed by a US$5,000 or US$10,000 Armani suit.

Luxury, to me, is not owning a lot of stuff. Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed.

The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.

But that's how it is when you start wanting to have things. Now, I just look at them, and when I go away I carry them in my head. Then my hands are always free, because I don't have to carry a suitcase.