105 Best E. E. Cummings Quotes From The Legendary American Poet
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Becoming a poet was a childhood dream come true for E. E. Cummings.
The poet, novelist, essayist, and painter was one of the most ingenious authors of his time. He is considered one of the most prominent poets of the 20th century.
Cummings is well known for his free-form poems. He wrote approximately 2900 poems during his lifetime. He was deeply inspired by Dante's 'Inferno' and art movements, namely, Dada and Surrealism.
His experimentation made him alter certain linguistic rules to suit his own purpose, such as his lack of punctuation. His popular poem 'I Carry Your Heart' is a metaphor for love, often read at weddings.
He has written an autobiographical novel called 'The Enormous Room', recollecting his World War I days. So, here are some E.E. Cummings quotes for you to read.
If you like our content, you can check out other amazing articles like Emily Dickinson quotes and Keats quotes.
Famous E. E. Cummings Quotes
Here are some hand-picked quotes for you!
1. "Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."
-E. E. Cummings.
2. "The most wasted of all days is one without laughter."
-E. E. Cummings.
3. "America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move."
-E. E. Cummings.
4. "Who knows if the moon's
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky—filled with pretty people?"
-E. E. Cummings.
5. "When man determined to destroy himself he picked the was of shall and finding only why smashed it into because."
-E. E. Cummings.
6. "It may take two people to make a really beautiful mistake."
-E. E. Cummings.
7. "To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white."
-E. E. Cummings.
8. "Dog hates mouse and worships "cat", mouse despises "cat" and hates dog, "cat" hates no one and loves mouse."
-E. E. Cummings.
9. "The eyes of my eyes are opened."
-E. E. Cummings.
10. "I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) I want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)"
-E. E. Cummings.
11. "We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust."
-E. E. Cummings.
12. "A lot of people think or believe or know they feel - but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling.
-E. E. Cummings.
13. "I am a little church (no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities..."
-E. E. Cummings.
14. "The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches."
-E. E. Cummings.
15. "Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility...”
-E. E. Cummings.
16. "A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man."
-E. E. Cummings.
17. "Most people are perfectly afraid of silence."
-E. E. Cummings.
18. "I spill my bright incalculable soul."
-E. E. Cummings.
19. "Nothing recedes like progress."
-E. E. Cummings.
20. "Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks."
-E. E. Cummings.
21. "Ye! the godless are the dull and the dull are the damned."
-E. E. Cummings.
22. "Time's a strange fellow;
more he gives than takes
(and he takes all)..."
-E. E. Cummings.
23. "The Symbol of all Art is the Prism."
-E. E. Cummings.
24. "Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination."
-E. E. Cummings.
25. "I don't like the memories because the tears come easily."
-E. E. Cummings.
26. "We’ll believe in that incredible
unanimal mankind."
-E. E. Cummings.
27. "If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn't a lie,
Life would be delight."
-E. E. Cummings.
28. "So then you turned into a photograph
of somebody who’s trying not to laugh
at somebody who’s trying not to cry."
-E. E. Cummings.
29. "Simple people, people who don't exist, prefer things which don't exist, simple things."
-E. E. Cummings.
30. "Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own."
-E. E. Cummings.
E. E. Cummings Quotes About Love
Here you will find some quotes on love from E. E. Cummings:
31. "All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn."
-E. E. Cummings.
32. "Unless you love someone, nothing else makes sense."
-E. E. Cummings.
33. "Kisses are a better fate than wisdom."
-E. E. Cummings.
34. "For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea."
-E. E. Cummings.
35. "Love is a place & through this place of love move (with brightness of peace) all places yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skillfully curled) all worlds."
-E. E. Cummings.
36. "Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear;"
-E. E. Cummings.
37. "So, when kiss Spring comes
we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks tock don't make
a toctic difference..."
-E. E. Cummings.
38. "Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink."
-E. E. Cummings.
39. "Something beats within my shirt to prove
he is undead who living no one is.
I have never loved you dear as now I love..."
-E. E. Cummings.
40. "Love being such, or such, the normal corners of your heart will never guess how much my wonderful jealousy is dark."
-E. E. Cummings.
41. "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..."
-E. E. Cummings.
42. "The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses."
-E. E. Cummings.
43. "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."
-E. E. Cummings.
44. "True lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who..."
-E. E. Cummings.
45. "Who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you..."
-E. E. Cummings.
46. "In thy beauty is the dilemma of flutes
thy eyes are the betrayal
of bells comprehended through incense."
-E. E. Cummings.
47. "Lovers alone wear sunlight."
-E. E. Cummings.
48. "Be of love a little more careful than of anything."
-E. E. Cummings.
49. "Love is thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail."
-E. E. Cummings.
50. "His lips drink water
but his heart drinks wine."
-E. E. Cummings.
51."Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars."
-E. E. Cummings.
52. "Only by you my heart always moves."
-E. E. Cummings.
53. "When Souls are outlawed, Hearts are sick, Hearts being sick, Minds nothing can."
-E. E. Cummings.
54. "I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)."
-E. E. Cummings.
55. "Losing through you
what seemed myself, I find
selves unimaginably mine."
-E. E. Cummings.
56. "Lady, I will touch you with my mind."
-E. E. Cummings.
57. "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.
58. "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.
59. "Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward."
-E. E. Cummings.
60. "Before leaving my room I turn, and (stooping through the morning) kiss this pillow, dear where our heads lived and were."
-E. E. Cummings.
E. E. Cummings Quotes About Life
Here are some E. E. Cummings quotes you don't want to miss.
61. "I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."
-E. E. Cummings.
62. "Unbeing dead isn't being alive."
-E. E. Cummings.
63. "It's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful."
-E. E. Cummings.
64. "Here life is, moves; faintly. A wrist. The faint throb of blood, precise, miraculous... And they talk of dying!"
-E. E. Cummings.
65. "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."
-E. E. Cummings.
66. "I shall imagine life is not worth dying, if (and when) roses complain their beauties are in vain"
-E. E. Cummings.
67. "Very luckily for you and me, the uncivilized sun mysteriously shines on 'good' and 'bad' alike."
-E. E. Cummings.
68. "I thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes..."
-E. E. Cummings.
69. "If most people were to be born twice they'd improbably call it dying.
You and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough."
-E. E. Cummings.
70. "It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are."
-E. E. Cummings.
71. "Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go".
-E. E. Cummings.
72. "Life's not a paragraph
And death I think is no parenthesis."
-E. E. Cummings.
73. "Whiter than lilies which are born and cease for being whiter than this world."
-E. E. Cummings.
74. "God's terrible face, brighter than a spoon,
collects the image of one fatal word;
so that my life (which liked the sun and moon)
resembles something that has not occurred.”
-E. E. Cummings.
75. "Really unreal world, will you perhaps do/the breathing for me while I am away?"
-E. E. Cummings.
76. "I mean that the blond absence of any program
except last and always and first to live
makes unimportant what I and you believe..."
-E. E. Cummings.
77. "Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else."
-E. E. Cummings.
78."That which we die for lives as wholly as that which we live for dies."
-E. E. Cummings.
77. "The other guineahen
died of a broken heart and we came to New York."
-E. E. Cummings.
78. "Seeker of truth
follow no path
all paths lead where
truth is here."
-E. E. Cummings.
79. "I imagine that yes is the only living thing."
-E. E. Cummings.
80. "A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long."
-E. E. Cummings.
E. Cummings Poetry Quotes
These quotes from E. E. Cummings love poems, essays, and novels will make your day.
81. "And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking."
-E. E. Cummings.
82. "If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making."
-E. E. Cummings.
83. "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."
-E. E. Cummings.
84. “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.
85. "Though wish and world go down, one poem yet shall swim.
-E. E. Cummings.
86. "Dead stars stink. dawn. Inane,
the poetic carcass of a girl..."
-E. E. Cummings.
87. "Poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality."
-E. E. Cummings.
88. "If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed."
-E. E. Cummings.
89. "We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we are not poets."
-E. E. Cummings.
90. "In the street of the sky night walks scattering poems."
-E. E. Cummings.
Iconic E. E. Cummings Quotes
These E. E. Cummings quotes are a must-read.
91. "Treat a man like dirt-he produces flower."
-E. E. Cummings.
92. "If there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have one."
-E. E. Cummings.
93. "Unlove's the heavenless hell and the homeless home."
-E. E. Cummings.
94. "I think you will be tired of telling
me & my dreams to go to hell."
-E. E. Cummings.
95. "I think, I too, have known autumn too long."
-E. E. Cummings.
96. "Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you."
-E. E. Cummings.
97. "What concerns me fundamentally is a meteoric burlesk melodrama."
-E. E. Cummings.
98. "Measureless our pure living complete love
whose doom is beauty and its fate to grow."
-E. E. Cummings.
99. "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.
100. "Life included, this Play isn't 'about,' it simply is. Don't try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you."
-E. E. Cummings.
101. "The first step to expanding your reality is to discard the tendency to exclude things from possibility."
-E. E. Cummings.
102. "There are certain things in which one is unable to believe for the simple reason that he never ceases to feel them. "
-E. E. Cummings.
103. "Since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid."
-E. E. Cummings.
104. "The three saddest things are the ill wanting to be well, the poor wanting to be rich, and the constant traveler saying 'anywhere but here'."
-E. E. Cummings.
105. "She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still."
-E. E. Cummings.
Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions, then why not take a look at Dylan Thomas quotes or William Blake quotes.
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Bachelor of Arts specializing in English, Master of Arts specializing in English
Rajnandini RoychoudhuryBachelor of Arts specializing in English, Master of Arts specializing in English
With a Master of Arts in English, Rajnandini has pursued her passion for the arts and has become an experienced content writer. She has worked with companies such as Writer's Zone and has had her writing skills recognized by publications such as The Telegraph. Rajnandini is also trilingual and enjoys various hobbies such as music, movies, travel, philanthropy, writing her blog, and reading classic British literature.
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