All music is is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments.
Walt WhitmanRead
Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the complexity of expressing one's thoughts and emotions through poetry, revealing deeper truths despite the fragility of the words.
In this quote, Walt Whitman explores the idea that even the most delicate expressions of oneself, such as his poetry, can convey profound insights. He recognizes that while he may attempt to mask his true thoughts and emotions, they can inadvertently reveal his innermost self more than his other works. This highlights the paradox of artistic expression, where vulnerability can lead to greater authenticity.
Themes
PoetryExpressionThoughtsVulnerabilitySelf
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary discussion about the power of poetry in expressing complex emotions.
More from Walt Whitman
All quotes →Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between people, and their beliefs - in religion, literature, colleges and schools- democracy in all public and private life.
Walt WhitmanRead
In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.
Walt WhitmanRead
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
Walt WhitmanRead
Now, dearest comrade, lift me to your face,_x000D_ _x000D_ We must separate awhileHere! take from my lips this kiss._x000D_ _x000D_ Whoever you are, I give it especially to you;_x000D_ _x000D_ So long!And I hope we shall meet again.
Walt WhitmanRead
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
Walt WhitmanRead
Similar quotes
The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude.
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Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.
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Because music, like color, or a cloud, is neither intelligent nor unintelligent - it just is. The chord, the simplest building block for even the tritest, silliest chart song, is a beautiful, perfect, mysterious thing, and when an ill-read, uneducated, uncultured, emotionally illiterate boor puts a couple of them together, he has every chance of creating something wonderful and powerful. All I ask of music is that is sounds good.
Nick HornbyRead
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; such tricks hath strong imagination.
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When I make a film I'm always in reality among the trees, and among the people like yourselves. There's no symbolic or conventional filter between me and reality as there is in literature. The cinema is an explosion of my love for reality.
Pier Paolo PasoliniRead
There is no sound more feminine than a woman in a taffeta dress.
Oscar De La RentaRead