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E. E. Cummings
115 quotes
“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.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: EIMI (1933)
“open your thighs to fate and(if you can withholding nothing)World, conceive a man”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: no thanks (1935), 37
“Simple people, people who don't exist, prefer things which don't exist,simple things. "Good" and "bad" are simple things. You bomb me = "bad." I bomb you = "good." Simple people(who,incidentally,run this socalled world)know this(they know everything)whereas complex people—people who feel something—are very,very ignorant and really don't know anything.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreword to an Exhibit: I" (1944)
“Very luckily for you and me,the uncivilized sun mysteriously shines on "good" and "bad" alike. He is an artist.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreword to an Exhibit: I" (1944)
“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 (1894–1962) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Forward to an Exhibit: II" (1945)
“when you confuse art with propaganda,you confuse an act of God with something which can be turned on and off like the hot water faucet. If "God" means nothing to you(or less than nothing)I'll cheerfully substitute one of your own favorite words,"freedom". You confuse freedom—the only freedom—with absolute tyranny... all over this socalled world,hundreds of millions of servile and insolent inhuman unbeings are busily unrolling in the enlightenment of propaganda.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Essay in Oscar Williams (ed.) The War Poets (1945), p. 12
“There are still a few erect human beings in the socalled world. Proudly and humbly,I say to these human beings: "O my fellow citizens,many an honest man believes a lie. Though you are as honest as the day, fear and hate the liar. Fear and hate him when he should be feared and hated:now. Fear and hate him were he should be feared and hated:in yourselves. "Do not hate and fear the artist in yourselves,my fellow citizens. Honour him and love him. Love him truly— do not try to possess him. Trust him as nobly as you trust tomorrow. "Only the artist in yourselves is more truthful than the night.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Essay in Oscar Williams (ed.) The War Poets (1945), pp. 12–13
“Life,for eternal us,is now”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to Poems 1924-1954 (1954)
“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”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: being to timelessness as it's to time" in TLS (1954) and in 95 Poems (1958)
“milly befriended a stranded star whose rays five languid fingers were;and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and may came home with a smooth round stone 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”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: maggie and milly and molly and may", New Poems (1957), p. 38
“that strictly(and how)scienti fic land of supernod where freedom is compulsory and only man is god.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: of all the blessings which to man", Complete Poems II (1968), p. 544
“while in an earthless hour my fond soul seriously yearns beyond this fern of sunset frond on frond opening in a rare Slowness of gloried air...”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All in green went my love riding on a great horse of gold into the silver dawn.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons— justlikethat Jesus he was a handsome man and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“this is the garden: colours come and go, frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing strong silent greens serenely lingering, absolute lights like baths of golden snow.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“among the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“when the proficient poison sure sleep bereaves us of our slow tranquillitiesand He without Whose favour nothing is (being of men called Love) upward doth leap from the mute hugeness of depriving deep,with thunder of those hungering wings of His,into the lucent and large signories —i shall not smile beloved;i shall not weep”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“who knows if the moon's a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky—filled with pretty people?”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted as epigraph by David Niven, The Moon's a Balloon (1971)
“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.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh say can you see by the dawn's early my country 'tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voices of liberty be mute?" He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“lady through whose profound and fragile lips the sweet small clumsy feet of April cameinto the ragged meadow of my soul.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here life is, moves; faintly. A wrist. The faint throb of blood, precise, miraculous... And they talk of dying! The blood delicately descending and ascending: making an arm. Being an arm. The warm flesh, the dim slender flesh filled with life, slenderer than a miracle, frailer... These are the shoulders through which fell the world. The dangerous shoulders of Eve, in god's entire garden newly strolling.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It may take two people to make a really beautiful mistake”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the only man woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors "is dead" beautiful Warren Gamaliel Harding "is" dead he's "dead”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(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”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“King Christ, this world is all aleak; and lifepreservers there are none: and waves which only He may walk Who dares to call Himself a man.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“ye!the godless are the dull and the dull are the damned”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn’t he danced his did.”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“love is the every only god”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“measureless our pure living complete love whose doom is beauty and its fate to grow”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“on forever's very now we stand”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“a politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“plato told him:he couldn't believe it(jesustold him;he wouldn't believe itlaotsze certainly told him,and general (yes mam) sherman; and even (believe it or not)you told him:i told him;we told him (he didn't believe it,no sir)”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We doctors know a hopeless case if — listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned, the single secret will still be man”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source