E. E. Cummings Quotes and Quotation

• Writing...is an art; and artists...are human beings. As a human being stands, so a human being is....
  • The Enormous Room (1922)

• All in green went my love riding
  on a great horse of gold
  into the silver dawn.
  • Tulips and Chimneys (1923) IV

• it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful
  • Tulips and Chimneys (1923) in Just-

• 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.
  • "The Adult, the Artist and the Circus." Vanity Fair (October 1925)

• somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
  any experience, your eyes have thier silence.
  in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
  or which i cannot touch because they are too near
  
  …nothing that we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:
  
  …nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
  • W [ViVa] (1931) LVII

• My theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated. I can express it in fifteen words, by quoting The Eternal Question And Immortal Answer of burlesk, viz. "Would you hit a woman with a child?— No, I'd hit her with a brick." Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.
  • EIMI (1933)

• I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
  than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
  • Collected Poems (1938) New Poems 22

• 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...
  •  "Foreword to an Exhibit: I" (1944)

• Why do you paint?
  For exactly the same reason I breathe.
  That’s not an answer.
  There isn’t any answer.
  How long hasn’t there been any answer?
  As long as I can remember.
  And how long have you written?
  As long as I can remember.
  I mean poetry.
  So do I.
  •  "Forward to an Exhibit: II" (1945)

• Your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy.
  Easy?
  Of course—you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands.
  I never met him.
  Who?
  Everybody.
  Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting?
  I am.
  Pardon me?
  I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational.
  Not all painting.
  No: housepainting is representational.
  And what does a housepainter represent?
  Ten dollars an hour.
  In other words, you don’t want to be serious—
  It takes two to be serious.
  •  "Forward to an Exhibit: II" (1945)

• 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.....
  • "i & their son: NONLECTURE TWO" SIX NONLECTURES (1953)

• The one...thing which mattered about any poem (so ran my second poetic period's credo) was what the poem said; it's socalled meaning.... Thus it will be seen that, by the year 1900, one growing American boy had reached exactly that stage of "intellectual development" beyond which every ungrowing Marxist adult of today is strictly forbidden...ever to pass.
  • "i & you & is: NONLECTURE FOUR" SIX NONLECTURES (1953)

is 5 (1926)

• There are certain things in which one is unable to believe for the simple reason that he never ceases to feel them. Things of this sort— things which are always inside of us and in fact are us and which consequently will not be pushed off or away where we can begin thinking about them— are no longer things; they, and the us which they are, equals A Verb; an IS.
  • Foreword

• 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
  • One XXVIII

• wholly to be a fool
  while Spring is in the world
  
  my blood approves,
  and kisses are a better fate
  than wisdom
  • Four VII

• life's not a paragraph
  And death i think is no parenthesis
  • Four VII

50 Poems (1940)

• ye!the godless are the dull and the dull are the damned
  • 13

• 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
  • 29

• my father moved through dooms of love
  through sames of am through haves of give
  singing each morning out of each night
  my father moved through depths of height
  • 34

• and nothing quite so least as truth
  —i say though hate were why men breathe—
  because my father lived his soul
  love is the whole and more than all
  • 34

• love is the every only god
  • 38

• love is more thicker than forget
  …it is more sane and sunly
  and more it cannot die
  than all the sky which only
  is higher than the sky
  • 42

• measureless our pure living complete love
  whose doom is beauty and its fate to grow
  • 50

• on forever's very now we stand
  • 50

1 x 1 (1944)

• a politician is an arse upon
  which everyone has sat except a man
  • X

• —when skies are hanged and oceans drowned, the single secret will still be man
  • XX

• what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
  bites this universe in two,
  peels forever out of it's grave
  and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
  • XX

• no sunbeam ever lies
  • XXX

• true wars are never won
  • XXX

• 'and liars kill their kind
  but' her,my 'love creates love only' our
  • XXXII

• 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
  • XXXIV

• true lovers in each happening of their hearts
  live longer than all which and every who;
  • XXXVI

• yes is a pleasant country…
  love is a deeper season
  than reason
  • XXXVIII

• —tommorow is our permanent address
  and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do,
  we'll move away still further:into now
  • XXXIX

• nothing except the impossible shall occur
  • XLII

XAIPE (1950)

• out of the mountain of his soul
  comes a keen pure silence
  • 19

• blossoming are people…
  all the earth has turned to sky
  …and i am you are i am we
  • 32

• i feel that(false and true are merely to know)
  Love only has ever been,is,and will ever be,So
  • 33

• 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
  • 65

• —the great my darling happens to be
  that love are in we, that love are in we
  • 66

• completely dare
  be beautiful
  • 68

• 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
  • 69

95 poems (1958)

• the courage to receive time's mightiest dream
  • 3

• no evil is
  so worse than worst you fall in hate with love
  
  —human one mortally immortal i
  can turn immense all time's because to why
  • 7

• though mankind persuades
  itself that every weed's
  a rose,roses(you feel
  certain) will only smile
  • 72

• seeming's enough for slaves of space and time
  —ours is the now and here of freedom. Come
  • 73

• Time's a strange fellow;
  more he gives than takes
  (and he takes all)
  • 78

• a million thousand hundred nothings seem
  —we are himself's own self;his very him
  • 84

• exists no miracle mightier than this:to feel
  • 89

• dreamtree,truthtree tree of jubilee:with aeons of (trivial merely)existance,all when may not measure a now of your treasure
  • 90

• each ignorant gladness —unteaches what despair preaches
  • 90

• unlove's the heavenless hell and the homeless home
  • 91

• lovers alone wear sunlight
  • 91

• The whole truth…
  sings only —and all lovers are the song
  • 91

• it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
  and whatever a sun will always sing is you
  • 92

73 poems (1963)

• follow no path
  all paths lead where
  
  truth is here
  • 3

• it's love by whom (my beautiful friend) the gift to live is without until:
  …love was and shall be this only truth (a dream of a deed, born not to die)
  • 4

• it's so damn sweet when Anybody—
  …makes you feel
  …for once
  (imag
  -ine) You
  • 7

• because it's
  
  Spring
  thingS
  
  dare to do people
  • 10

• a great
  man
  is
  gone.
  
  Tall as the truth was who; and
  wore his
  … life
  like a …
  sky.
  • 14

• they flock and they flee through the thunder of seem
  though the stars in their silence
  say Be.
  • 29

• the cunning the craven
  … they live for until
  though the sun in his heaven
  says Now
  • 29

• they work and they pray
  and they bow to a must
  though the earth in her splendor
  says May
  • 29

• without any doubt he was
  whatever(first and last)
  
  most people fear most:
  a mystery for which iv'e
  no word except alive
  • 30

• Mostpeople have been heard
  screaming for international
  measures that render hell rational
  
  —i thank heaven somebody's crazy
  enough to give me a daisy
  • 30

• we sans love equals mob
  • 31

• unbeingdead isn't beingalive
  • 31

• 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
  • 32

• hugest whole creation may be less
  incalculable than a single kiss
  • 37

• now I lay me down to dream of(nothing
  i or any somebody or you
  can begin to begin to imagine) something which nobody may keep.
  • 44

• the axis of the universe
  —love
  • 73

from A Poet's Advice

• Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel …
  the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.
  To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else— means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

• 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 are not poets.

• 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.

External links: