E.E. Cummings: Quotes about the world

E.E. Cummings was American poet. Explore interesting quotes on world.
E.E. Cummings: 416   quotes 35   likes

“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.”

E.E. Cummings

A Poet's Advice (1958)
Context: Almost 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 nobody-but-yourself.
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.

World , Fight , Night

“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

Variant: For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea.
Source: 100 Selected Poems

World , Sea

“The sensical law of this world is might makes right; the nonsensical law of our heroine is love conquers all.”

E.E. Cummings

A Foreword to Krazy (1946)
Context: This hero and villain no more understand Krazy Kat than the mythical denizens of a two dimensional realm understand some three dimensional intruder. The world of Offissa Pupp and Ignatz Mouse is a knowledgeable power-world, in terms of which our unknowledgeable heroine is powerlessness personified. The sensical law of this world is might makes right; the nonsensical law of our heroine is love conquers all. To put the oak in the acorn: Ignatz Mouse and Offissa Pupp (each completely convinced that his own particular brand of might makes right) are simple-minded—Krazy isn't—therefore, to Offissa Pupp and Ignatz Mouse, Krazy is. But if both our hero and our villain don't and can't understand our heroine, each of them can and each of them does misunderstand her differently. To our softhearted altruist, she is the adorably helpless incarnation of saintliness. To our hardhearted egoist, she is the puzzlingly indestructible embodiment of idiocy. The benevolent overdog sees her as an inspired weakling. The malevolent undermouse views her as a born target. Meanwhile Krazy Kat, through this double misunderstanding, fulfills her joyous destiny.

Love , World , Law

“Love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds”

E.E. Cummings
Love , World , Peace

“somewhere i have never travelled, 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 your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you always open petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously)her first rose or if it be your wish to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly
as the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries
rendering death and forever with each breathing”

E.E. Cummings

W [ViVa] (1931) LVII

Life , Death , World , Travel

“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)

Wisdom , Fate , World , Fools

“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

Hate , World , Fear , Universe

“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”

E.E. Cummings

Source: Selected Poems

Fate , Secret , World , Fear

“As small as a world as large as alone.”

E.E. Cummings

"maggie and milly and molly and may" in Complete Poems: 1904-1962
Variant: may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
Context: 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

World

“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)

World , Art , Freedom , Fight

“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

Love , Hate , Truth , Lie

“more each particular person is(my love)
alive than every world can understand
and now you are and i am now and we're
a mystery that will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before—
and shining this our now must come to then”

E.E. Cummings

69
XAIPE (1950)

Love , World , Understanding , Personality

“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

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

God , World , Art , Freedom

“my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world”

E.E. Cummings

unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
Does this sound dismal? It isn't.
It's the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel.
E. E. Cummings
A Poet's Advice (1958)

World , People , Learning

“An artist doesn't live in some geographical abstraction, superimposed on a part of this beautiful earth by the nonimagination of unanimals and dedicated to the proposition that massacre is a social virtue because murder is an individual vice. Nor does an artist live in some soi-disant world, nor does he live in some so-called universe, nor does he live in any number of "worlds" or in any number of "universes."”

E.E. Cummings

As for a few trifling delusions like the "past" and "present" and "future" of quote mankind unquote,they may be big enough for a couple of billion supermechanized submorons but they're much too small for one human being.
Re Ezra Pound (p. 69)
i : six nonlectures (1953)

World , Beauty , Parting , Universe

“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 Him

Him (1927)

World , God , Life , Making love

“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

"maggie and milly and molly and may" in Complete Poems: 1904-1962

Home , Star , World , Sea