Top 268 Quotes & Sayings by e. e. cummings

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

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

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

It takes three to make a child.

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.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

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

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

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.

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

Unbeing dead isn't being alive.

Nothing recedes like progress.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.

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.

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

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

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.

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

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

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.

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

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.

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

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

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

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

The artist is not a man who describes, but a man who feels.

Love is the whole and more than all.

most people are perfectly afraid of silence

(existing's tricky:but to live's a gift)

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

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.

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

We can never be born enough.

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses

Your head is a living forest full of songbirds.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Laughing is just another way of showing people your wise

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Exists no miracle mightier than this: to feel.

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

Progress is a comfortable disease.

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.

...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.

Tomorrow is our permanent address.