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E.E. Cummings Quotes
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Edward Estlin "E. E." Cummings , often styled as e e cummings, as he sometimes signed his name, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems; two autobiographical novels; four plays and several essays. He is remembered as an eminent voice of 20th century English-language literature.

✵ 14. October 1894 – 3. September 1962
E.E. Cummings photo
E.E. Cummings: 208 quotes35 likes

E.E. Cummings Quotes

“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

Four VII
is 5 (1926)

“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”

E.E. Cummings

“hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young”

E.E. Cummings

Source: Complete Poems, 1904-1962

“the poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople… you and i are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.”

E.E. Cummings

Source: 100 Selected Poems

“By the way, a gendarme assured me this is not a prison.”

E.E. Cummings The Enormous Room

Source: The Enormous Room

“We doctors know a hopeless case if — listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

XIV : pity this busy monster, manunkind
1 x 1 (1944)
Variant: listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go

“(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

W [ViVa] (1931) LVII

“exists no miracle mightier than this:to feel”

E.E. Cummings

89
95 poems (1958)

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”

E.E. Cummings

Source: 100 Selected Poems

“Awake, chaos:we have napped.”

E.E. Cummings

Source: Complete Poems, 1913-1962

“Before leaving my room
i turn, and (stooping
through the morning) kiss
this pillow, dear
where our heads lived and were.”

E.E. Cummings

“things which in my mind blossom will
stumble beneath a clumsiest disguise appear
capable of fragility and indecision”

E.E. Cummings

“a politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

Source: 1 x 1 (1944), X

“dreamtree, truthtree tree of jubilee:with aeons of (trivial merely)existence, all when may not measure a now of your treasure”

E.E. Cummings

90
95 poems (1958)

“concerning this selfstyled world's greatest and most generous literary figure: who had just arrived in our nation's capitol, attired in half a GI uniform and ready to be hanged as a traitor by the only country which ever made even a pretense of fighting for freedom of speech
Re Ezra Pound — poetry happens to be an art; and artists happen to be human beings.”

E.E. Cummings

Re Ezra Pound (p. 69)
i : six nonlectures (1953)

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

E.E. Cummings book Tulips and Chimneys

Tulips and Chimneys (1923) IV

“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

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

“it's so damn sweet when Anybody—
…makes you feel
…for once
(imag
-ine) You”

E.E. Cummings

7
73 poems (1963)

“it's love by whom (my beautiful friend) the gift to live is without until:
…love was and shall be this only truth (a dream of a deed, born not to die)”

E.E. Cummings

4
73 poems (1963)

“If you're a twofisted, spineless progressive (a mighty fashionable stance nowadays) Offissa Pupp, who forcefully asserts the will of socalled society, becomes a cosmic angel; while Ignatz Mouse, who forcefully defies society's socalled will by asserting his authentic own, becomes a demon of anarchy and a fiend of chaos. But if—whisper it—you're a 100% hidebound reactionary, the foot's in the other shoe. Ignatz Mouse then stands forth as a hero, pluckily struggling to keep the flag of free will flying; while Offissa Pupp assumes the monstrous mien of a Goliath, satanically bullying a tiny but indomitable David. Well, let's flip the coin—so: and lo! Offissa Pupp comes up. That makes Ignatz Mouse "tails."”

E.E. Cummings

Now we have a hero whose heart has gone to his head and a villain whose head has gone to his heart.
A Foreword to Krazy (1946)

“plato told
him:he couldn't
believe it(jesus told him; he
wouldn't believe
itlao tsze
certainly told
him, and general
(yes mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or not)you
told him:i told
him; we told him”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

he didn't believe it,no <p> sir
XIII : plato told
1 x 1 (1944)

“seeming's enough for slaves of space and time
—ours is the now and here of freedom. Come”

E.E. Cummings

73
95 poems (1958)

“the great my darling happens to be
that love are in we, that love are in we”

E.E. Cummings

66
XAIPE (1950)

“on forever's very now we stand”

E.E. Cummings

50
50 Poems (1940)

“The whole truth…
sings only —and all lovers are the song”

E.E. Cummings

91
95 poems (1958)

“Mostpeople have been heard
screaming for international
measures that render hell rational —i thank heaven somebody's crazy
enough to give me a daisy”

E.E. Cummings

30
73 poems (1963)

“Time's a strange fellow;
more he gives than takes
(and he takes all)”

E.E. Cummings

78
95 poems (1958)

“poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality…. poetry is being, not doing…. if poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities...”

E.E. Cummings

"i & their son: Nonlecture Two"
i : six nonlectures (1953)

“because it's Spring
thingS dare to do people”

E.E. Cummings

10
73 poems (1963)

“Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain…
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep”

E.E. Cummings

29
50 Poems (1940)

“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

42
50 Poems (1940)

“the axis of the universe
—love”

E.E. Cummings

73
73 poems (1963)

“and liars kill their kind
but' her, my 'love creates love only' our”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

Source: 1 x 1 (1944), XXXII

“hugest whole creation may be less
incalculable than a single kiss”

E.E. Cummings

37
73 poems (1963)

“a million thousand hundred nothings seem
—we are himself's own self; his very him”

E.E. Cummings

84
95 poems (1958)

“all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again”

E.E. Cummings

Collected Poems (1963), p. 65

“out of the mountain of his soul
comes a keen pure silence”

E.E. Cummings

19
XAIPE (1950)

“that strictly(and how)scienti
fic land of supernod
where freedom is compulsory
and only man is god.”

E.E. Cummings

"of all the blessings which to man" in Complete Poems II (1968), p. 544

“now I lay me down to dream of(nothing
i or any somebody or you
can begin to begin to imagine) something which nobody may keep.”

E.E. Cummings

44
73 poems (1963)

“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

One XXVIII
is 5 (1926)

“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”

E.E. Cummings

65
XAIPE (1950)

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

E.E. Cummings

A Foreword to Krazy (1946)

“they flock and they flee through the thunder of seem
though the stars in their silence
say Be.”

E.E. Cummings

29
73 poems (1963)

“true lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who;”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

Source: 1 x 1 (1944), XXXVI

“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

"Forward to an Exhibit: II" (1945)

“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

34
50 Poems (1940)

“each ignorant gladness —unteaches what despair preaches”

E.E. Cummings

90
95 poems (1958)

“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 are not poets.”

E.E. Cummings

A Poet's Advice (1958)