Famous Quotes & Sayings

E. E. Cummings Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by E. E. Cummings.

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Famous Quotes By E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 840779

I St
ep
into the not
merely immeasurable into
the mightily alive the
dear beautiful eternal night — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 599843

Relax and give the play a chance to strut its stuff - relax, stop wondering what it's all 'about' - like many strange and familiar things, Life included, this Play isn't 'about,' it simply is. Don't try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. Don't try to understand it, let it try to understand you. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1486221

Only by you my heart always moves. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 973262

The theory of the free press is not that the truth will be presented completely or perfectly in any one instance, but that the truth will emerge from free discussion — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 128192

I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 665563

Really unreal world, will you perhaps do
the breathing for me while I am away? — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 843250

I remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol's coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my uncle
Sol
and started a worm farm) — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 578717

A noone who,till their and your returning,
spends the forever of his loneliness
dreaming their eyes have opened to your morning — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2010381

Progress is a comfortable disease. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1098367

Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 324436

May came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2247785

for whenever men are right they are not young — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1866922

The only man, woman, or child who ever wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 997057

All which isn't singing is mere talking ... and all talking's to oneself alone but the very song of(as mountains feel and lovers)singing is silence — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1159997

I am someone who proudly and humbly affirms that love is the mystery-of-mysteries, and that nothing measurable matters 'a very good God damn'; that 'an artist, a man, a failure' is no mere whenfully accreting mechanism, but a givingly eternal complexity-neither some soulless and heartless ultrapredatory infra-animal nor any understandingly knowing and believing and thinking automaton, but a naturally and miraculously whole human being-a feelingly illimitable individual; whose only happiness is to transcend himself, whose every agony is to grow. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 656369

Peering from some high window; at the gold of November sunset
(and feeling that if day has to become night this is a beautiful way). — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 710691

Tumbling-hair
picker of buttercups
violets
dandelions
And the big bullying daisies
through the field wonderful
with eyes a little sorry
Another comes
also picking flowers — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 382291

Unless you love someone nothing makes sense. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 835849

Yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year
both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear
love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're) — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 620134

Worms are the words but joy's the voice — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1727879

Nothing recedes like progress. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2046357

Time is a tree (this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1518848

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1881346

You said Is
there anything which
is dead or alive more beautiful
than my body,to have in your fingers
(trembling ever so little)?
Looking into
your eyes Nothing,i said,except the
air of spring smelling of never and forever.
... and through the lattice which moved as
if a hand is touched by a
hand(which
moved as though
fingers touch a girl's
breast,
lightly)
Do you believe in always,the wind
said to the rain
I am too busy with
my flowers to believe,the rain answered — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1446854

...we're a mystery which will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before... — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2030155

Unlove's the heavenless hell and the homeless home — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1598042

In a middle of a room
stands a suicide
sniffing a Paper rose
smiling to a self
"somewhere it is Spring and sometimes
people are in real:imagine
somewhere real flowers,but
I can't imagine real flowers for if I
could,they would somehow
not Be real"
(so he smiles
smiling)"but I will not
everywhere be real to
you in a moment"
The is blond
with small hands
"& everything is easier
than I had guessed everything would
be;even remembering the way who
looked at whom first,anyhow dancing — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 114421

O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee ,has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty .how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest them only with spring) — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1863985

Treat a man like dirt-he produces flowers. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1857236

Nobody loses all the time. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1829207

The sweet small clumsy feet of april came into the ragged meadow of my soul. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1737847

To hell with literature
we want something redblooded — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1737686

Things which in my mind blossom will
stumble beneath a clumsiest disguise appear
capable of fragility and indecision — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1731616

O gouvernment francais, I think it was not very clever of You to put this terrible doll in La Ferte; for when Governments are found dead there is always a little doll on top of them, pulling and tweaking with his little hands to get back at the microscopic knife which sticks firmly in the quiet meat of their hearts. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1907508

Spring is like a perhaps hand
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1652463

No evil is so worse than worst you fall in hate with love — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1704132

Miracles are to come.
With you I leave a remembrance
of miracles: they are by
somebody who can love
and who shall be continually reborn,
a human being. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1689066

I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1600934

Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1677631

That which we die for lives as wholly as that which we live for dies. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1601043

For any ruffian of the sky
your kingbird doesn't give a damn-
his royal warcry is I AM
and he's the soul of chivalry
in terror of whose furious beak
(as sweetly singing creatures know)
cringes the hugest heartless hawk
and veers the vast most crafty crow
your kingbird doesn't give a damn
for murderers of high estate
whose mongrel creed is Might Makes Right
-his royal warcry is I AM
true to his mate his chicks his friends
he loves because he cannot fear
(you see it in the way he stand
and looks and leaps upon the air) — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1630806

Let's start a magazine
to hell with literature
we want something redblooded
lousy with pure
reeking with stark
and fearlessly obscene
but really clean
get what I mean
let's not spoil it
let's make it serious
something authentic and delirious
you know something genuine like a mark
in a toilet
graced with guts and gutted
with grace — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 99251

Damn everything but the circus! ... The average 'painter' 'sculptor' 'poet' 'composer' 'playwright' is a person who cannot leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with a clown's mouth, orchestrate twenty lions. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 464807

Here's to opening and upward ...
and to yourself and up with you and up with and up with laughing. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2163073

On forever's very now we stand. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2130909

may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she

(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she

(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)

may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she

may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she

but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she

(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she

(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she) — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2129540

Yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skilfully curled) all worlds — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2115449

if i love You
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries

if you love
me) distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream

if we love each (shyly)
other, what clouds do or Silently
Flowers resembles beauty
less than our breathing — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2096851

XVII

Lady, i will touch you with my mind.
Touch you and touch and touch
until you give
me suddenly a smile,shyly obscene

(lady i will
touch you with my mind.)Touch
you,that is all,

lightly and you utterly will become
with infinite care

the poem which i do not write. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2062847

A connotation of infinity
sharpens the temporal splendor of this night
when souls which have forgot frivolity
in lowliness,noting the fatal flight
of worlds whereto this earth's a hurled dream
down eager avenues of lifelessness
consider for how much themselves shall gleam,
in the poised radiance of perpetualness.
When what's in velvet beyond doomed thought
is like a woman amorous to be known;
and man,whose here is alway worse than naught,
feels the tremendous yonder for his own
on such a night the sea through her blind miles
of crumbling silence seriously smiles — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2055068

His lips drink water
but his heart drinks wine — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 2017366

I love you much most beautiful darling more than anyone on the earth and I like you better than everything in the sky. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1872137

Since feelings come first, who cares about the syntax of things? — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1992499

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1986224

For life's not a paragraph/ and death, i think, is no parenthesis. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1950556

Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1919392

Writingis an art; and artistsare human beings. As a human being stands, so a human being is — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1911320

I'd rather have two good friends, than 500,000 admirers. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 76729

Equality is what does not exist among mortals. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1879760

Guilt is the cause of more marauders
than history's most obscene disauders — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1879490

Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 765216

There's time for laughing and there's time for crying
for hoping for despair for peace for longing
- a time for growing and a time for dying:
a night for silence and a day for singing
but more than all(as all your more than eyes
tell me)there is a time for timelessness — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 960175

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 953825

If there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven or
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses
my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)
standing near my
swaying over her
(silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see
nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my
(suddenly in sunlight
he will bow,
and the whole garden will bow) — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 934966

So truly perfectly the skies
by merciful love whispered were,
completes its brightness with your eyes
any illimitable star. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 885440

The eyes of my eyes are opened. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 846629

love is the every only god — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 348581

Do not hate or fear the artist in yourselves ... Honor and love him ... do not try to possess him. Trust him as nobly as you trust tomorrow. Only the artist in yourself is more truthful than the night. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 372498

because it's

Spring
thingS

dare to do people

(& not
the other way

round)because it

's A
pril

Lives lead their own

persons(in
stead

of everybodyelse's)but

what's wholly
marvellous my

Darling

is that you &
i are more than you

& i(be

ca
us

e It's we) — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 832896

The moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 791685

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love

(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)

lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there's nobody else alive

(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)

not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing

(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 297893

Notice the convulsed orange inch of moon
perching on this silver minute of evening — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 727045

And death i think is no parenthesis. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 715942

Mr youse needn't be so spry concernin questions arty each has his tastes but as for i i likes a certain party gimme the he-man's solid bliss for youse ideas i'll match youse a pretty girl who naked is is worth a million statues — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 620955

So far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was, is, and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 406806

No time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met christ
jesus)my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed(as
close as i'm to you
yes closer
made of nothing
except loneliness. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 581344

Spring slattern of seasons
you have soggy legs
and a muddy petticoat
drowsy
is your hair your
eyes are sticky with
dream and you have a sloppy body from
being brought to bed of crocuses
when you sing in your whisky voice
the grass rises on the head of the earth
and all the trees are put on edge
spring
of the excellent jostle of
thy hips
and the superior — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 448454

Love being such, or such,
the normal corners of your heart
will never guess how much
my wonderful jealousy is dark — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 518261

I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)I want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart) — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 502562

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 475915

Love is thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1143839

i imagine that yes is the only living thing. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 185188

a billion brains may coax undeath
from fancied fact and spaceful time--
no heart can leap, no soul can breathe
but by the sizeless truth of a dream
whose sleep is the sky and the earth and the sea
For love are in you am in i are in we — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1477145

All ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1397011

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1338641

Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anyone else. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1300980

Lessons hide in his wrinkles. Bells ding in the oldness of eyes. Did he by, any chance, tell children that there are such monstrous things as peace and goodwill ... a corrupter of youth no doubt ... — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1289540

One day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1225528

Suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1211537

Your slightest look easily will unclose me, though I have closed myself as fingers, you open petal by petal myself a Spring opens her first rose. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 74857

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes sense. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1597163

When god lets my body be
From each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom
the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing
a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes
will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow
Into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass
their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1124239

Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
in the lost lands — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1119046

Now the ears of my ears are awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1102067

The artist is not a man who describes, but a man who feels. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 263286

What if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry? — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1040603

Down with hell and heaven and all the religious fuss
infinity pleased our parents
one inch looks good to us — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 1024801

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 273652

By the way, a gendarme assured me this is not a prison. — E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings Quotes 996348

Next to of course god America i / love you land of the pilgrims and so forth oh — E. E. Cummings