Skip to content

Oh, a strange hand writes for our dear son—O, stricken mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes—flashes with black—she catches the main words only;
Sentences broken—gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital;
At present low, but will soon be better.

— Walt Whitman

Another quote →

Topics

War

More quotes by Walt Whitman

I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations — many rare combinations.
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.

Complete Prose Works (1892)

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

All Walt Whitman quotes →

You may also like

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now.

Hunter S. Thompson

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

George Santayana Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

Ulysses S. Grant Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

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.