E. E. Cummings citations

Page 4

“it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than thesquarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.”

“in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems”

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

“deeds cannot dream what dreams can do”

“down with hell and heaven and all the religious fuss
infinity pleased our parents
one inch looks good to us”

“what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of it's grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?”

“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”

“If 180 million people want to be undead, that’s their funeral, but I happen to like being alive.”

“Here's to opening and upward…
and to yourself and up with you and up with and up with laughing.”

“the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy”

“nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility”

“Always it’s Spring)and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves.”

“Damn everything but the circus!… The average 'painter' 'sculptor' 'poet' 'composer' 'playwright' is a person who cannot leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with a clown's mouth, orchestrate twenty lions.”

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

“… and down they forgot as up they grew.”

“i shall imagine life
is not worth dying, if
(and when)roses complain
their beauties are in vain

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

“mr youse needn't be so spry
concernin questions arty

each has his tastes but as for i
i likes a certain party

gimme the he-man's solid bliss
for youse ideas i'll match youse

a pretty girl who naked is
is worth a million statues”

“one pierced moment whiter than the rest

-turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.”

“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.”

“n
OthI
n

g can

s
urPas
s

the m

y
SteR
y

of

s
tilLnes
s”

“Nobody loses all the time.”

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

“Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.”

“… A good Book, has no Ending…”

“down with ought with because with every brain that thinks it thinks nor dares to feel.”

“our can'ts were born to happen

our mosts have died in more”

“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”

“we're anything brighter than even the sun”

“wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom”