E.E. Cummings: Trending quotes

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E.E. Cummings: 416 quotes35 likes

“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””

W [ViVa] (1931) XVII

“Life, for eternal us, is now”

Introduction to Poems 1924-1954

“they work and they pray
and they bow to a must
though the earth in her splendor
says May”

29
73 poems (1963)

“nothing except the impossible shall occur”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

XLII
1 x 1 (1944)

“ye! the godless are the dull and the dull are the damned”

13
50 Poems (1940)

“without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last) most people fear most:
a mystery for which iv'e
no word except alive”

30
73 poems (1963)

“no evil is
so worse than worst you fall in hate with love —human one mortally immortal i
can turn immense all time's because to why”

7
95 poems (1958)

“completely dare
be beautiful”

68
XAIPE (1950)

“all which isn't singing is mere talking
…
and all talking's to oneself alone
but the very song of(as mountains
feel and lovers)singing is silence”

32
73 poems (1963)

“how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any — lifted from the no
of all nothing — human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?”

65
XAIPE (1950)

“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”

34
50 Poems (1940)

“It may take two people to make a really beautiful mistake”

E.E. Cummings Him

Him (1927)

“when skies are hanged and oceans drowned, the single secret will still be man”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

Source: 1 x 1 (1944), XX

“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.”

Essay in the anthology The War Poets (1945) edited by Oscar Williams

“though mankind persuades
itself that every weed's
a rose, roses(you feel
certain) will only smile”

72
95 poems (1958)

“The one…thing which mattered about any poem (so ran my second poetic period's credo) was what the poem said; it's socalled meaning … Thus it will be seen that, by the year 1900, one growing American boy had reached exactly that stage of "intellectual development" beyond which every ungrowing Marxist adult of today is strictly forbidden … ever to pass.”

"i & you & is: Nonlecture Four"
i : six nonlectures (1953)

“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 Him

Him (1927)

“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.
Essay in the anthology The War Poets (1945) edited by Oscar Williams

“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.
"Foreword to an Exhibit: I" (1944)

“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?”

E.E. Cummings book EIMI

No, I'd hit her with a brick." Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.
EIMI (1933)