“This is what you shall do; love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman
I’m a misanthrope so I don’t entirely agree with it. But still, a lovely philosophy from one of the loveliest men who ever lived.
What a wonderful and lovely philosophy. With all the shit you tend to see in the world, even if you end up becoming a cynic, this wonderful idealism still seems to stir even the darkest and most bitter hearts, at least just a bit. I need to read more Whitman, my life has been woefully devoid of him until now.
It’s really quite remarkable how he can convince you that the world can be good. Reading him is what i imagine listening to a full-blown chant must have been like…. by the end of “Song of Myself” the universe is always changed to something so expansive and bright– it _always_ brings me to tears. Hail Walt!
I don’t know… it seems there’s something of Phoibos Apollon Phanaios in those wise words. He would stand up for substance. Empirical yet humane, I suppose…