100 Famous Quotes By E.E. Cummings, The Author Of 100 Selected Poems

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

You

E. E. Cummings

  

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.

You Never Yourself Like

E. E. Cummings

  

Unbeing dead isn't being alive.

E. E. Cummings

  

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

You

E. E. Cummings

  

Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.

Love Heart

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.

You Think Believe

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

Will I

E. E. Cummings

  

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

You Will

E. E. Cummings

  

Lovers alone wear sunlight.

Alone

E. E. Cummings

  

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes sense.

You Love

E. E. Cummings

  

Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.

You

E. E. Cummings

  

Listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go

E. E. Cummings

  

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

E. E. Cummings

  

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

You God I

E. E. Cummings

  

The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.

E. E. Cummings

  

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

  

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star...

Love Hope

E. E. Cummings

  

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

Alone Home

E. E. Cummings

  

Life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis

Death Think I

E. E. Cummings

  

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit

Experience Believe

E. E. Cummings

  

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

E. E. Cummings

  

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.

Like I

E. E. Cummings

  

I carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

Heart I

E. E. Cummings

  

One's not half of two; two are halves of one.

E. E. Cummings

  

She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still

E. E. Cummings

  

Most people are perfectly afraid of silence

E. E. Cummings

  

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.

E. E. Cummings

  

Twice I have lived forever in a smile

I

E. E. Cummings

  

A wind has blown the rain away & the sky away & all the leaves away, & the trees stand. i think i, too, have known autumn too long.

Think I

E. E. Cummings

  

And now you are and I am and we're a mystery which will never happen again.

You Never Will I

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

Life Love Time I

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

You Me I

E. E. Cummings

  

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

Beautiful

E. E. Cummings

  

I love you much most beautiful darling more than anyone on the earth and I like you better than everything in the sky.

You Love Like Beautiful I

E. E. Cummings

  

Since the thing perhaps is to eat flowers and not to be afraid

E. E. Cummings

  

Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

You Love I

E. E. Cummings

  

When man determined to destroy himself he picked the was of shall and finding only why smashed it into because

E. E. Cummings

  

Only by you my heart always moves.

You Heart

E. E. Cummings

  

His lips drink water but his heart drinks wine

Heart

E. E. Cummings

  

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.

You I

E. E. Cummings

  

We can never be born enough.

Never

E. E. Cummings

  

...remember one thing only: that it's you-nobody else-who determines your destiny and decides your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.

You

E. E. Cummings

  

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.

Living

E. E. Cummings

  

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

E. E. Cummings

  

Your head is a living forest full of songbirds.

Living

E. E. Cummings

  

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

Beautiful I

E. E. Cummings

  

May my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living

Heart Living

E. E. Cummings

  

We are for each other: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph and death i think is no parenthesis

Death Think I

E. E. Cummings

  

Love is the whole and more than all.

Love

E. E. Cummings

  

Now the ears of my ears are awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened.

E. E. Cummings

  

You are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing.

You Will

E. E. Cummings

  

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

Love

E. E. Cummings

  

And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart I carry your heart [ i carry it in my heart ]

Heart I

E. E. Cummings

  

Great men burn bridges before they come to them

E. E. Cummings

  

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

E. E. Cummings

  

Be of love(a little) More careful Than everything

E. E. Cummings

  

Laughing is just another way of showing people your wise

E. E. Cummings

  

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

Living I

E. E. Cummings

  

The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses

E. E. Cummings

  

And the coolness of your smile is stirringofbirds between my arms

E. E. Cummings

  

Who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you

You Never

E. E. Cummings

  

Love is the every only god

Love God

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

  

I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air.

Will I

E. E. Cummings

  

As small as a world and as large as alone For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

You

E. E. Cummings

  

Love is a deeper season than reason; my sweet one

Love

E. E. Cummings

  

You shall above all things be glad and young For if you're young,whatever life you wear it will become you;and if you are glad whatever's living will yourself become.

You Life Yourself Will Living

E. E. Cummings

  

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

E. E. Cummings

  

Seeker Of Truth seeker of truth follow no path all paths lead where truth is here

E. E. Cummings

  

Your homecoming will be my homecoming

Will

E. E. Cummings

  

Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are by somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn, a human being.

You I

E. E. Cummings

  

You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.

You

E. E. Cummings

  

Love being such, or such, the normal corners of your heart will never guess how much my wonderful jealousy is dark

Love Never

E. E. Cummings

  

It's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than thesquarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.

You Trying I

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

  

-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

  

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.

E. E. Cummings

  

Feeling is first,

E. E. Cummings

  

What if a dawn of a doom of a dream bites this universe in two, peels forever out of his grave, and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?

You Me

E. E. Cummings

  

Deeds cannot dream what dreams can do

Dreams

E. E. Cummings

  

Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility

Power

E. E. Cummings

  

Somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence; in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near

Experience Me Never I

E. E. Cummings

  

If 180 million people want to be undead, that’s their funeral, but I happen to like being alive.

Like I

E. E. Cummings

  

In the street of the sky night walks scattering poems

E. E. Cummings

  

Down with hell and heaven and all the religious fuss infinity pleased our parents one inch looks good to us

E. E. Cummings

  

Here's to opening and upward... and to yourself and up with you and up with and up with laughing.

You Yourself

E. E. Cummings

  

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

E. E. Cummings

  

The moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

Like

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

I

E. E. Cummings

  

...and down they forgot as up they grew.

E. E. Cummings

  

Always it’s Spring)and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves.

Love

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.

Art

E. E. Cummings

  

One pierced moment whiter than the rest -turning from the tremendous lie of sleep i watch the roses of the day grow deep.

E. E. Cummings

  

An intelligent person fights for lost causes, realizing that others are merely effects

E. E. Cummings

  

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

E. E. Cummings

  

Our can'ts were born to happen our mosts have died in more

E. E. Cummings

  

Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.

Like I

E. E. Cummings