All music is is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments.
Walt WhitmanRead
The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds - where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough - a modest living- and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Wealth should not be measured just by riches, but by the well-being and equality of its people.
Walt Whitman's quote emphasizes that the true measure of a country's greatness lies not in its accumulation of wealth and riches by a few, but in the abundance and quality of life that it offers to all its citizens. He argues that a society where everyone has enough to live modestly, free from extreme poverty and inequality, is far more admirable than one characterized by vast fortunes and social disparities.
Themes
WealthEqualityPovertyCountryQuality Of Life
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on social justice, one might quote Whitman to emphasize the importance of equality.
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
It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.
Rod SerlingRead
I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me.
C. S. LewisRead
A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.
Lewis H. LaphamRead
I don't want them to kill no hog . . . . I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet.
Thomas JeffersonRead
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
LaoziRead
The truth of an upright man must be accepted on his own terms. Moreover, since natures vary, we must agree that all the beauties of human excellence may be fostered by faiths that we do not share.
Victor HugoRead