“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone 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 —
re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
and 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, preface to Leaves of Grass
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