E. E. Cummings Quotes

163 Sourced Quotes

Though mankind persuades
itself that every weed's
a rose, roses (you feel
certain) will only smile

E. E. Cummings
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

E. E. Cummings
Poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality.... poetry is being, not doing.... if poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities...

E. E. Cummings
—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned, the single secret will still be man

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
The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds.

E. E. Cummings
Love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're).

E. E. Cummings
Take me up into your mind once or twice before I die (you know why: just because the eyes of you and me will be full of dirt some day). Quickly take me up into the bright child of your mind.

E. E. Cummings
Nothing false and possible is love
(who's imagined, therefore limitless)
love's to giving as to keeping's give; as yes is to if, love is to yes

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
The cunning the craven
… they live for until
though the sun in his heaven
says Now

E. E. Cummings
Art is a mystery.
A mystery is something immeasurable.
In so far as every child and woman and man may be immeasurable, art is the mystery of every man and woman and child. In so far as a human being is an artist, skies and mountains and oceans and thunderbolts and butterflies are immeasurable; and art is every mystery of nature. Nothing measurable can be alive; nothing which is not alive can be art; nothing which cannot be art is true: and everything untrue doesn't matter a very good God damn...

E. E. Cummings
Plato Told
Him: he couldn't
believe it (jesus told him; he
wouldn't believe
it) lao tsze
certainly told
him, and general
(yes mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
Or Not)you
Told Him: i told
him; we told him
(he didn't believe it, no sir)

E. E. Cummings
God's terrible face brighter than a spoon collects the image of one fatal word;so that my life(which liked the sun and the moon)resembles something that has not occurred:i am a birdcage without any bird a collar looking for a dog a kisswithout lips;a prayer lacking any kneesbut something beats within my shirt to provehe is undead who living noone is.I have never loved you dear as now i love.

E. E. Cummings
My advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world — unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
Does this sound dismal? It isn't.
It's the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel.

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

E. E. Cummings
Seeming's enough for slaves of space and time
—ours is the now and here of freedom. Come

E. E. Cummings
Maybe god is a child 's hand)very carefully bring -ing to you and to me(and quite with out crushing)the papery weightless diminutive world with a hole in it out of which demons with wings would be streaming if something had(maybe they couldn't agree)not happened(and floating- ly int o

E. E. Cummings
—the great my darling happens to be
that love are in we, that love are in we

E. E. Cummings
A humbly poetic, gently clownlike, supremely innocent, and illimitably affectionate creature (slightly resembling a child's drawing of a cat, but gifted with the secret grace and obvious clumsiness of a penguin on terra firma) who is never so happy as when egoist-mouse, thwarting altruist-dog, hits her in the head with a brick. Dog hates mouse and worships "cat", mouse despises "cat" and hates dog, "cat" hates no one and loves mouse.

E. E. Cummings
Ye! the godless are the dull and the dull are the damned

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
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
All nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live

E. E. Cummings
Someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then) they
said their nevers they slept their dream

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…
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep

E. E. Cummings
The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.

E. E. Cummings
Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.

E. E. Cummings
My
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could

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