E. E. Cummings Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by E. E. Cummings.
Famous Quotes By E. E. Cummings
I St
ep
into the not
merely immeasurable into
the mightily alive the
dear beautiful eternal night — E. E. Cummings
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
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
I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance. — E. E. Cummings
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
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
Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink. — E. E. Cummings
The only man, woman, or child who ever wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead. — E. E. Cummings
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
...we're a mystery which will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before... — E. E. Cummings
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
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
Treat a man like dirt-he produces flowers. — E. E. Cummings
Nobody loses all the time. — E. E. Cummings
The sweet small clumsy feet of april came into the ragged meadow of my soul. — E. E. Cummings
To hell with literature
we want something redblooded — E. E. Cummings
Things which in my mind blossom will
stumble beneath a clumsiest disguise appear
capable of fragility and indecision — E. E. Cummings
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
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
No evil is so worse than worst you fall in hate with love — E. E. Cummings
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
I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) — E. E. Cummings
Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars. — E. E. Cummings
That which we die for lives as wholly as that which we live for dies. — E. E. Cummings
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
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
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
Here's to opening and upward ...
and to yourself and up with you and up with and up with laughing. — E. E. Cummings
On forever's very now we stand. — E. E. Cummings
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
Yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skilfully curled) all worlds — E. E. Cummings
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
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
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
His lips drink water
but his heart drinks wine — E. E. Cummings
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
Since feelings come first, who cares about the syntax of things? — E. E. Cummings
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
For life's not a paragraph/ and death, i think, is no parenthesis. — E. E. Cummings
Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own. — E. E. Cummings
Writingis an art; and artistsare human beings. As a human being stands, so a human being is — E. E. Cummings
I'd rather have two good friends, than 500,000 admirers. — E. E. Cummings
Equality is what does not exist among mortals. — E. E. Cummings
Guilt is the cause of more marauders
than history's most obscene disauders — E. E. Cummings
Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement. — E. E. Cummings
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
Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination. — E. E. Cummings
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
So truly perfectly the skies
by merciful love whispered were,
completes its brightness with your eyes
any illimitable star. — E. E. Cummings
The eyes of my eyes are opened. — E. E. Cummings
love is the every only god — E. E. Cummings
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
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
The moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy — E. E. Cummings
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
Notice the convulsed orange inch of moon
perching on this silver minute of evening — E. E. Cummings
And death i think is no parenthesis. — E. E. Cummings
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
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
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
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
Love being such, or such,
the normal corners of your heart
will never guess how much
my wonderful jealousy is dark — E. E. Cummings
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
The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. — E. E. Cummings
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
i imagine that yes is the only living thing. — E. E. Cummings
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
All ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again. — E. E. Cummings
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
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
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
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
Suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head. — E. E. Cummings
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
Unless you love someone, nothing else makes sense. — E. E. Cummings
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
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
Now the ears of my ears are awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened. — E. E. Cummings
The artist is not a man who describes, but a man who feels. — E. E. Cummings
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
Down with hell and heaven and all the religious fuss
infinity pleased our parents
one inch looks good to us — E. E. Cummings
If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making. — E. E. Cummings
By the way, a gendarme assured me this is not a prison. — E. E. Cummings
Next to of course god America i / love you land of the pilgrims and so forth oh — E. E. Cummings