e. e. cummings quotes:

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.

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.

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

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.

Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat Jesus he was a handsome man and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death

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

Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

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

Buffalo Bill's defunct

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.

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

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

love being such, or such,the normal corners of your heartwill never guess how muchmy wonderful jealousy is dark

I fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows"

great men burn bridges before they come to them

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

Who knows if the moon's / a balloon, coming out of a keen city / in the sky - filled with pretty people?

Unbeing dead isn't being alive.

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

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'.

hopes dance best on bald men's hair

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

I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness

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

You said Isthere anything whichis dead or alive more beautifulthan my body,to have in your fingers(trembling ever so little)?Looking intoyour eyes Nothing,i said,except theair of spring smelling of never and forever.....and through the lattice which moved asif a hand is touched by ahand(whichmoved as thoughfingers touch a girl'sbreast,lightly)Do you believe in always,the windsaid to the rainI am too busy withmy flowers to believe,the rain answered

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

Because it'sSpringthingSdare to do people(& notthe other wayround)because it's AprilLives lead their ownpersons(insteadof everybodyelse's)butwhat's whollymarvellous myDarlingis that you &i are more than you& i(because It's we)"

I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)"

And the coolness of your smile is stirringofbirds between my arms

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

To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white.

his lips drink water but his heart drinks wine

Someone asked me what home was and all I could think of were the stars on the tip of your tongue, the flowers sprouting from your mouth, the roots entwined in the gaps between your fingers, the ocean echoing inside of your ribcage.

Meanwhile myself et cetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera.)

my mother hoped that i would die etcetera bravely of course my father used to become hoarse talking about how it was a privilege and if only he could

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.

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

Every artist's strictly illimitable country is himself. An artist who plays that country false has committed suicide;and even a good lawyer cannot kill the dead. But a human being who's true to himself whoever himself may be is immortal;and all the atomic bombs of all the antiartists in spacetime will never civilize immortality.

All in green went my love of riding on a great horse of gold into the silver dawn.

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

Humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it's there and sitting down on it and because you are forever making poems in the lap of death Humanity i hate you

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

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

O gouvernment francais, I think it was not very clever of You to put this terrible doll in La Ferte; for when Governments are found dead there is always a little doll on top of them, pulling and tweaking with his little hands to get back at the microscopic knife which sticks firmly in the quiet meat of their hearts.

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

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

What concerns me fundamentaly is a meteoric burlesk melodrama, born of the immemorial adage love will find a way.

Lovers alone wear sunlight.

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

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.

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

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.

It may take two people to make a really beautiful mistake.

I fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows

Dive for dreamsor a slogan may topple you(trees are their rootsand wind is wind)trust your heartif the seas catch fire(and live by lovethough the stars walk backward)honour the pastbut welcome the future(and dance your deathaway at this wedding)never mind a worldwith its villains or heroes(for god likes girlsand tomorrow and the earth)

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...

My mind isa big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal toolsin an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex-ecute strides of cobaltnevertheless ifeel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming something a little different, in factmyselfhereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings

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 nobod

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

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

As small as a world as large as alone.

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

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

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes sense.

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

For surely as each November has its April, mysteries only are significant; and one mystery-of-mysteries creates them all: 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

I fear no fate for you are my fate, my sweet.

for whenever men are right they are not young

a pretty girl, who naked isis worth a million statues

twice I have lived forever in a smile

Who can tell truth from falsehood any more?I say it, and you feel it in your hearts:no man or woman on this big small earth.How should our sages miss the mark of life,and our most skillful players lose the game?your hearts will tell you, as my heart has told me:because all know, and no one understands.

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...

Your head is a living forest full of songbirds.

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still.

since feelings come first, who cares about the syntax of things?

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 to kisskiss you and to kiss me.

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

Sweet springtime is my time is your time is our time for springtime is love time and viva sweet love.

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...

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.

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

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.

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. i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling -firm-smooth ness and which i will again and again and again kiss, i like kissing this and that of you, i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs, and possibly i like the thrill of under me you so quite new.

The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses

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

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

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. Anaïs Nin I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved. George Eliot 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...

Because you aren't afraid to kiss the dirt (and consequently dare to climb the sky)

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.

...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.

The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.

I'd rather have two good friends, than 500,000 admirers.

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 and I are more than you and I because it's we.

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 (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: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any--lifted from the no of all nothing--human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Love is the whole and more than all.

...on forever's very now we stand.

The sweet small clumsy feet of april came into the ragged meadow of my soul.

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

Well, write poetry, for God's sake, it's the only thing that matters.

Treat a man like dirt-he produces flowers.

The only man, woman, or child who ever wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.

here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear. . .

A pretty girl who is naked / is worth a million statues

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

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

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. 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.

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.

my sweet old etcetera aunt lucy during the recent war could and what is more did tell you just what everybody was fighting for, my sister isabel created hundreds (and hundreds) of socks not to mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers etcetera wristers etcetera, my mother hoped that i would die etcetera bravely of course my father used to become hoarse talking about how it was a privilege and if only he could meanwhile my self etcetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of Your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

Exists no miracle mightier than this: to feel.

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

A bouquet of clumsy words: you know that place between sleep and awake where you're still dreaming but it's slowly slipping? I wish we could feel like that more often. I also wish I could click my fingers three times and be transported to anywhere I like. I wish that people didn't always say 'just wondering' when you both know there was a real reason behind them asking. And I wish I could get lost in the stars. Listen, there's a hell of a good universe next door, let's go.

love is the every only god

a poet is someone who is abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement. Which is to say the highest form of concentration possible: fascination; to report on the electrifying experience of being