E E Cummings Quotes

Annie died the other day
never was there such a lay
whom,among her dollies,dad
first("don't tell your mother")had ~ E. E. Cummings

Such was a poet and shall be and is
-who'll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam's architecture with his life: and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain's heartbeat in his hand. ~ E. E. Cummings

dont get me wrong oblivion
I never loved you kiddo
you that was always sticking around
spoiling me for everyone else
telling me how it would make
you nutty if I didnt let you
go the distance
and I gave you my breasts to feel
didnt I
and my mouth to kiss

O I was too good to you oblivion old kid thats all
and when I might have told you
to go ahead and croak yourselflike
you was always threatning you are
are going to do
I didnt
I said go on you inter-
est me
I let you hang around
and whimper
and Ive been getting mine
Listen

theres a fellow I love like I never love anyone else thats six
foot two tall with a face like any girl would die to kiss and a skin
like a little kittens
thats asked me to go to Murrays tonight with him and see the cab-
aret and dance you know
well
if he asks me to take another Im going to and if he asks me to take
another after that Im going to do that and if he puts me into a taxi
and tells the driver to take her easy and steer for the morning Im
going to let him and if he starts in right away putting it to me in
the cab
Im not going to whisper
Oblivion
do you get me
not that Im tired of automats and Childss and handling out ribbon to
old ladies that aint got three teeth and being followed home by pimps
and ~ E.E. Cummings

May came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone. ~ 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

be with me in the sacred witchery
of almostness which May makes follow soon
on the sweet heels of passed afterday,
clothe thy soul's coming merely ~ E.E. Cummings

in heavenly realms of hellas dwelt
two very different sons of zeus:
one, handsome strong and born to dare
--a fighter to his eyelashes--
the other,cunning ugly lame;
but as you'll shortly comprehend
a marvellous artificer

now Ugly was the husband of
(as happens every now and then
upon a merely human plane)
someone completely beautiful;
and Beautiful,who(truth to sing)
could never quite tell right from wrong,
took brother Fearless by the eyes
and did the deed of joy with him

then Cunning forged a web so subtle
air is comparatively crude;
an indestructible occult
supersnare of resistless metal:
and(stealing toward the blissful pair)
skilfully wafted over them-
selves this implacable unthing

next,our illustrious scientist
petitions the celestial host
to scrutinize his handiwork:
they(summoned by that savage yell
from shining realms of regions dark)
laugh long at Beautiful and Brave
--wildly who rage,vainly who strive;
and being finally released
flee one another like the pest

thus did immortal jealousy
quell divine generosity,
thus reason vanquished instinct and
matter became the slave of mind;
thus virtue triumphed over vice
and beauty bowed to ugliness
and logic thwarted life:and thus--
but look around you,friends and foes

my tragic tale concludes herewith: ~ E.E. Cummings

The courage to receive time 's mightiest dream ~ 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

it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee ~ E. E. Cummings

The hills
like poets put on
purple thought against
the
magnificent clamor of
day
tortured
in gold ~ E. E. Cummings

Up into the the silence the green
silence with a white earth in it
you will (kiss me)go
out into the morning the young
morning with a warm world in it
(kiss me)you will go
on into the sunlight the fine
sunlight with a firm day in it
you will go(kiss me
down into your memory and
a memory and memory
i) kiss me,(will go) ~ E. E. Cummings

Let's live suddenly without thinking.
Let's live like the light that kills.
And let's as silence,
because Whirl's after all:
(after me) love, and after you.
I occasionally feel vague how
vague I don't know tenuous Now -
spears and The Then - arrows making do
our mouths, something red, something tall. ~ E. E. Cummings

By the way, a gendarme assured me this is not a prison. ~ 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

Certainly the most obvious ... example of the strictly infantile essence of America's all-conquering mentality greets our eyes daily, anywhere and everywhere, in the guise of the tabloid newspaper. The tabloid newspaper actually means to the typical American of the era what the Bible is popularly supposed to have meant to the typical Pilgrim Father: viz. a very present help in times of trouble, plus a means of keeping out of trouble via harmless, since vicarious, indulgence in the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. ~ E. E. Cummings

Though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens ~ E. E. Cummings

The Symbol of all Art is the Prism. The goal is destructive. To break up the white light of objective realism into the secret glories it contains. ~ E. E. Cummings

I shall imagine life is not worth dying,if (and when)roses complain their beauties are in vain but though mankind persuades itself that every weed's a rose,roses(you feel certain)will only smile ~ E. E. Cummings

When serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage -
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age
when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
- and any wave signs on the dotted line
or else an ocean is compelled to close
when the oak begs permission of the birch
to make an acorn - valleys accuse their
mountains of having altitude - and march
denounces april as a saboteur
then we'll believe in that incredible
unanimal mankind (and not until) ~ E. E. Cummings

Spring is like a perhaps hand ~ E. E. Cummings

and on forever's very now we stand ~ E. E. Cummings

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

...and down they forgot as up they grew. ~ E. E. Cummings

The blond absence of any program except last and always and first to live makes unimportant what i and you believe; ~ E. E. Cummings

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time - and whenever we do it, we're not poets. ~ E.E. Cummings

no whisper mars the utter silence of the untranslated stars. ~ E. E. Cummings

Awake,chaos:we have napped. ~ E. E. Cummings

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
--i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
--i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness) ~ E.E. Cummings

i will wade out until my thighs are steeped in burning flowers. i will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air ~ E. E. Cummings

...A good Book, has no Ending... ~ 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

The Sky A Silver"

the sky a silver
dissonance by the correct
fingers of April
resolved

into a
clutter of trite jewels

now like a moth with stumbling

wings flutters and flops along the
grass collides with trees and
houses and finally,
butts into the river ~ E. E. Cummings

You Are Tired (I Think)"

You are tired,
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.

Come with me, then,
And we'll leave it far and far away -
(Only you and I, understand!)

You have played,
(I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of,
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break, and -
Just tired.
So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,
And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart -
Open to me!
For I will show you the places Nobody knows,
And, if you like,
The perfect places of Sleep.

Ah, come with me!
I'll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,
That floats forever and a day;
I'll sing you the jacinth song
Of the probable stars;
I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,
Until I find the Only Flower,
Which shall keep (I think) your little heart
While the moon comes out of the sea. ~ E.E. Cummings

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

We're anything brighter than even the sun ~ E. E. Cummings

I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving. ~ Steve Martin

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

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

Nothing recedes like progress. ~ E. E. Cummings

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

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

Be of love(a little)
More careful
Than everything ~ E. E. Cummings

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

May my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile ~ E. E. Cummings

If
If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn't a lie,
Life would be delight,
But things couldn't go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn't be I.
If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I'd be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn't be you.
If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair,
Yet they'd all despair,
For if here was there
We wouldn't be we. ~ E. E. Cummings

what if a much of a which of a wind ~ E. E. Cummings

Down with ought with because with every brain that thinks it thinks nor dares to feel. ~ E. E. Cummings

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom. ~ E. E. Cummings

They believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead ~ E. E. Cummings

And what I want to know is how do you like your blue-eyed boy ~ E. E. Cummings

Must's a schoolroom in the month of may ~ E. E. Cummings

It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing. ~ 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

Nothing"
the unjust man complained
"is just" ("or un-" the just rejoined. ~ E. E. Cummings

The first step to expanding your reality is to discard the tendency to exclude things from possibility. ~ E. E. Cummings

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. ~ 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

Along the brittle treacherous bright streets
of memory comes my heart,singing like
an idiot,whispering like a drunken man ~ E. E. Cummings

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea. ~ E. E. Cummings

And still the mad magnificent herald Spring assembles beauty from forgetfulness with the wild trump of April:witchery of sound and odour drives the wingless thing man forth in the bright air ... ~ 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

Since Feeling is first who ever pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you ... ~ E. E. Cummings

if i

or anybody don't
know where it her his

my next meal's coming from
i say to hell with that
that doesn't matter (and if

he she it or everybody gets a
bellyful without
lifting my finger i say to hell
with that i

say that doesn't matter) but
if somebody
or you are beautiful or
deep or generous what
i say is

whistle that
sing that yell that spell
that out big (bigger than cosmic
rays w ar earthquakes famine or the ex

prince of whoses diving into
a whatses to rescue miss nobody's
probably handbag) because i say that's not

swell (get me) babe not (understand me) lousy
kid that's something else my sweet (i feel that's

true) ~ 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 really love poetry. I'm a big E.E. Cummings fan and a big Walt Whitman fan, and I have a big book of poetry. ~ Mae Whitman

Noone beautiful ever hurries. ~ E. E. Cummings

And the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love ~ E. E. Cummings

And so 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. ~ E. E. Cummings

These are all direct quotes, except every time they use a curse word, I'm going to use the name of a famous American poet:
'You Walt Whitman-ing, Edna St. Vincent Millay! Go Emily Dickinson your mom!'
'Thanks for the advice, you pathetic piece of E.E. Cummings, but I think I'm gonna pass.'
'You Robert Frost-ing Nikki Giovanni! Get a life, nerd. You're a virgin.'
'Hey bro, you need to go outside and get some fresh air into you. Or a girlfriend.'
I need to get a girlfriend into me? I think that shows a fundamental lack of comprehension about how babies are made. ~ John Green

O to be in finland/ now that russia's here) ~ 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

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

Pull,
my finger
please. ~ 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

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

My blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom ~ E. E. Cummings

Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(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
-excerpt of #35 from 100 Selected Poems ~ E. E. Cummings

Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself. ~ E. E. Cummings

Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to most people? ~ E. E. Cummings

The hardest fight a man has to fight is to live in a world where every single day someone is trying to make you someone you do not want to be
~ E. E. Cummings

I have found what you are like the rain (Who feathers frightened fields with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields easily the pale club of the wind and swirled justly souls of flower strike the air in utterable coolness deeds of gren thrilling light with thinned newfragile yellows lurch and.press
in the woods which stutter and sing And the coolness of your smile is stirringofbirds between my arms;but i should rather than anything have(almost when hugeness will shut quietly)almost, your kiss ~ E. E. Cummings

if everything happens that can't be done
(and anything's righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there's nothing as something as one

one hasn't a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don't grow)
one's anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we come who)
one's everyanything so

so world is a leaf so tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

now i love you and you love me
(and books are shutter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there's somebody calling who's we

we're anything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one ~ E.E. Cummings

May I be I is the only prayer
not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong. ~ E. E. Cummings

Children are apt to forget to remember. ~ E. E. Cummings

A man who had fallen among thieves lay by the roadside on his back dressed in fifteenthrate ideas wearing a round jeer for a hat ~ E. E. Cummings

-tomorrow is our permanent address
and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do,
we'll move away still further:into now ~ E. E. Cummings

Great men burn bridges before they come to them ~ E. E. Cummings

When god decided to invent everything he took one reath bigger than a circustent and everything began ~ 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

The mind is its own beautiful prisoner.
Mind looked long at the sticky moon
opening in dusk her new wings
then decently hanged himself,one afternoon.
The last thing he saw was you
naked amid unnaked things ... ~ E. E. Cummings

In the street of the sky night walks scattering poems ~ E. E. Cummings

Favor everything without exception that makes people different: discourage everything whatsoever that makes people alike. The Rest follows ~ E. E. Cummings

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

At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks. ~ E. E. Cummings