Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and—in addition to publishing his poetry—was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman’s major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.

1. Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.

2. Be curious, not judgmental.

3. Happiness, not in another place but this place … not for another hour, but this hour.

4. Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.

5. Do anything, but let it produce joy.

6. When I give, I give myself.

7. O captain! My Captain!
Our fearful trip is done.
The ship has weather’d every wrack
The prize we sought is won
The port is near, the bells I hear
The people all exulting
While follow eyes, the steady keel
The vessel grim and daring
But Heart! Heart! Heart!
O the bleeding drops of red
Where on the deck my captain lies
Fallen cold and dead.

7. If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.

8. I exist as I am, that is enough.

In 1681, King Charles II handed over a large piece of his American land holdings to William Penn to satisfy a debt the king owed to Penn’s father. This land included present-day Pennsylvania and Delaware. Penn immediately sailed to America and his first step on American soil took place in New Castle in 1682. On this occasion, the colonists pledged allegiance to Penn as their new Proprietor, and the first general assembly was held in the colony. Afterwards, Penn journeyed up river and founded Philadelphia. However, Penn’s Quaker government was not viewed favorably by the Dutch, Swedish, and English settlers in what is now Delaware. They had no “historical” allegiance to Pennsylvania, so they almost immediately began petitioning for their own Assembly. In 1704 they achieved their goal when the three southernmost counties of Pennsylvania were permitted to split off and become the new semi-autonomous colony of Lower Delaware. As the most prominent, prosperous and influential “city” in the new colony, New Castle became the capital.

1. Time is what we want most,but what we use worst.

2. Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

3. A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.

4. In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory, or an unjust interest.

5. I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.

6. True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

7. I know no religion that destroys courtesy, civility, and kindness.

8. If we would mend the World, we should mend Ourselves; and teach our Children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.

9. He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left to him owes to his father’s care.

10. Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

11. No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself.

12. Only trust thyself, and another shall not betray thee.

13. Humility and knowledge in poor clothes excel pride and ignorance in costly attire.

14. Force may subdue, but love gains, and he that forgives first wins the laurel.

15. Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.

16. To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals – this alone is worth the struggle.

17. He that does good for good’s sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.

1. The path to perfection is difficult to men in every lot; there is no royal road for rich or poor. But difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

2. The more a person analyzes his inner self, the more insignificant he seems to himself. This is the first lesson of wisdom. Let us be humble, and we will become wise. Let us know our weakness, and it will give us power.

3. The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but often those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought.

4. Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.

5. No one should part with their individuality and become that of another.

6. Fix your eyes on perfection and you make almost everything speed towards it.

7. To be prosperous is not to be superior, and should form no barrier between men. Wealth out not to secure the prosperous the slightest consideration. The only distinctions which should be recognized are those of the soul, of strong principle, of incorruptible integrity, of usefulness, of cultivated intellect, of fidelity in seeking the truth.

8. Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.

9. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the communion with superior minds … In the best books, authors talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books.

10. Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds to the numberless flowers of the Spring; it waves in the branches of the trees and in the green blades of grass; it haunts the depths of the earth and the sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and the setting sun all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple; and those people who are alive to it can not lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side.

11. Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.

12. Error is discipline through which we advance.

13. It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind’s dignity.

14. No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.

15. Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.

16. Everything here but the soul of man is a passing shadow. The only enduring substance is within. When shall we awake to the sublime greatness, the perils, the accountableness, and the glorious destinies of the immortal soul?

17. Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life.

18. Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.

19. Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.

20. Real greatness has nothing to do with a man’s sphere. It does not lie in the magnitude of his outward agency, in the extent of the effects which he produces. The greatest men may do comparatively little.

James wrote influential books on pragmatism, psychology, educational psychology, the psychology of religious experience, and mysticism. He was the brother of novelist Henry James and of diarist Alice James. In the summer of 1878, James married Alice Gibbens.

William James was born at the Astor House in New York City. He was the son of Henry James Sr., a noted and independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.

1. The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.

2. Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

3. The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.

4. A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

5. Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

6. If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

7. Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

8. There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true self.

9. Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

10. The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

11. I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

12. When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.

13. New habits can be launched . . . on condition of there being new stimuli and new excitements.

14. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

15. The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

16. If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

17. If you can change your mind, you can change your life.

18. We don’t laugh because we’re happy — we’re happy because we laugh.

19. Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.

20. Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

21. It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult undertaking which, more than anything else, will determine its successful outcome.

22. Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

23. Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.

24. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

25. Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

26. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

Wordsworth’s magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem “to Coleridge”. Wordsworth was Britain’s Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

1. It’s never crowded along the extra mile.

2. Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.

3. There is no way to prosperity, prosperity is the way.

4. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

5. You are always a valuable, worthwhile human being — not because anybody says so, not because you’re successful, not because you make a lot of money — but because you decide to believe it and for no other reason.

6. When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way.

7. Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

8. Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.

9. The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.

10. There’s nothing wrong with anger provided you use it constructively.

11. You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‘I release the need for this in my life’.

12. When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

13. Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.

14. Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say.

15. People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get the most.

16. The fact that you are willing to say, ”I do not understand, and it is fine,” is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

17. All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.

18. Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

19. Successful people make money. It’s not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.

20. Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy.

21. What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside of you.

22. I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

23. Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

24. Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.

25. You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.

26. When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.

27. You’ll seldom experience regret for anything that you’ve done. It is what you haven’t done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you’ve lost them forever.

28. Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.

29. A mind at peace, a mind centered and not focused on harming others, is stronger than any physical force in the universe.

30. The positive effect of kindness on the immune system and on the increased production of serotonin in the brain has been proved on research studies. Serotonin is a naturally occurring substance in the body that makes us feel more comfortable, peaceful, and even blissful. In fact the role of most anti-depressants is to stimulate the serotonin production to alleviate depression. Research has shown that a simple act of kindness directed toward another improves the functioning of the immune system and stimulates production of serotonin in both the recipient of the kindness and the person extending the kindness. Even more amazing is that persons observing the act of kindness have similar beneficial results. Imagine this: kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved.

1. You are a beautiful person, you deserve a beautiful life.

2. Afterwards, she lies nestled against me, her hair tickling my face. I stroke her lightly, memorizing her body. I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and walk around for the rest of my days with her encased in my skin. I want. I lie motionless, savoring the feeling of her body against mine. I’m afraid to breathe in case I break the spell.

3. We lean against the wall in silence, still holding hands. After about an hour she falls asleep, sliding down until her head rests on my shoulder. I remain awake, every fiber of my body aware of her proximity.

4. Sometimes I think if I had to choose between an ear of corn or making love to a woman, I’d choose the corn.

5. Age is a terrible thief. Just when you’re getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back. It makes you ache and muddies your head and silently spreads cancer throughout your spouse.

6. When will people learn that just because you can make something doesn’t mean you should?

7. Dear God. Not only am I unemployed and homeless, but I also have a pregnant woman, bereaved dog, elephant, and eleven horses to take care of.

8. Life is the most spectacular show on earth.

9. …if you expect people to try to do things your way, you’re going to have to give some hints as to what that way is.

10. I look after those who look after me.” He smacks his lips, stares at me, and adds, “I also look after those who don’t.

During the last few days while I was surfing through blogs, I have read tributes to this great man. How he had brought Americans through many great moments; the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the Apollo 11 Moon landing. And in another blog post, the lady wrote how he had inspired her to write from a young age. I believe he has inspired many more in a lot of ways.

In a statement by President Barrack Obama, “For decades, Walter Cronkite was the most trusted voice in America. His rich baritone reached millions of living rooms every night, and in an industry of icons, Walter set the standard by which all others have been judged.”

Quotes originally from EVliving.com

During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.