“I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, It alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder.”

“One's-Self I Sing One's-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine, The Modern Man I sing.”

“I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”

“Sail, sail thy best, ship of democracy,Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the present only,The past is also stored in thee,Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the western continent alone,Earth's resume entire floats upon thy keel, O ship, is steadied by thy spars,With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee,With all their ancient struggles , martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents,Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant..”

“When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with such 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.”

“Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.”

“The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.”