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It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess.

— Walt Whitman

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Source: "Talk to an Art-Union (A Brooklyn fragment)" (1839); later delivered as a lecture at the Brooklyn Art Union (31 March 1851) and printed in the Brooklyn Daily Advertizer (3 April 1851)
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walt Whitman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.