“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.”
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.
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E.E. Cummings 208
American poet 1894–1962Related quotes

“The hardest battle you’re ever going to fight is the battle to be just you.”
Speaking Of Love (1980)
Variant: The hardest battle you are ever going to have to fight is the battle to be just you.

The Art of Poetry on a New Plan (1761), vol. ii. p. 147.
The saying "he who fights and runs away may live to fight another day" dates at least as far back as Menander (ca. 341–290 B.C.), Gnomai Monostichoi, aphorism #45: ἀνήρ ὁ ϕɛύγων καὶ ράλίν μαχήɛṯαί (a man who flees will fight again). The Attic Nights (book 17, ch. 21) of Aulus Gellius (ca. 125–180 A.D.) indicates it was already widespread in the second century: "...the orator Demosthenes sought safety in flight from the battlefield, and when he was bitterly taunted with his flight, he jestingly replied in the well-known verse: The man who runs away will fight again".

"Mean People Fail", November 2014

“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.”

“Day
Play
We play all day.
Night
Fight
We fight all night.”
Source: Hop On Pop

Interview, 2004 http://www.theguardian.com/football/2004/apr/04/sport.features

“For those that fly may fight again,
Which he can never do that's slain.”
Canto III, line 243
Source: Hudibras, Part III (1678)