E. E. Cummings - Alive Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

View all E. E. Cummings Quotes
More each particular person is (my love)
alive than every world can understand
and now you are and i am now and we're
a mystery that will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before—
and shining this our now must come to then

E. E. Cummings
So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed—after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels—to call our "lives,") let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and "art" or "the arts." Let us not forget that every authentic "work of art" is in and of itself alive and that, however "the arts" may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as "beauty." This being so, our three ring circus is art—for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of "beauty" is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is "childish," is idiotic.

E. E. Cummings
I who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth

E. E. Cummings
Without any doubt he was
whatever (first and last) most people fear most:
a mystery for which iv'e
no word except alive

E. E. Cummings
I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness

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
A distinct throat. Which breathes. A head: small, smaller than a flower. With eyes and with lips. Lips more slender than light; a smile how carefully and slowly made, a smile made entirely of dream. Eyes deeper than Spring. Eyes darker than Spring, more new... These, these are the further miracles... the breasts. Thighs. The All which is beyond comprehension — the All which is perpetually discovered, yet undiscovered: sexual, sweet, Alive!

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

E. E. Cummings