E. e. cummings quotes

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

I am someone who proudly and humbly affirms that love is the mystery-of-mysteries, and that nothing measurable matters 'a very good God damn'; that 'an artist, a man, a failure' is no mere whenfully accreting mechanism, but a givingly eternal complexity-neither some soulless and heartless ultrapredatory infra-animal nor any understandingly knowing and believing and thinking automaton, but a naturally and miraculously whole human being-a feelingly illimitable individual; whose only happiness is to transcend himself, whose every agony is to grow.

As small as a world as large as alone.

Tomorrow is our permanent address.

You shall above all things be glad and young.

O sweet spontaneous earth

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

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

it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses

Such was a poet and shall be and is -who'll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam's architecture with his life: and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain's heartbeat in his hand.

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you

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

You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.

most people are perfectly afraid of silence

The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.

And now you are and I am and we're a mystery which will never happen again.

One's not half two. It's two are halves of one.

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

Your slightest look easily will unclose me, though I have closed myself as fingers, you open petal by petal myself a Spring opens her first rose.

The theory of the free press is not that the truth will be presented completely or perfectly in any one instance, but that the truth will emerge from free discussion

And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart I carry your heart [ i carry it in my heart ]

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear. . .

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

It may take two people to make a really beautiful mistake.

Seeker of truth follow no path all paths lead where truth is here.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

notice the convulsed orange inch of moon perching on this silver minute of evening

A bouquet of clumsy words: you know that place between sleep and awake where you're still dreaming but it's slowly slipping? I wish we could feel like that more often. I also wish I could click my fingers three times and be transported to anywhere I like. I wish that people didn't always say 'just wondering' when you both know there was a real reason behind them asking. And I wish I could get lost in the stars. Listen, there's a hell of a good universe next door, let's go.

I spill my bright incalculable soul

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.

somewhere i have never traveled, 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

may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living

love is the every only god

Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.

Equality is what does not exist among mortals.

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.

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

let it go -- the smashed word broken open vow or the oath cracked length wise -- let it go it was sworn to go let them go -- the truthful liars and the false fair friends and the boths and neithers -- you must let them go they were born to go let all go -- the big small middling tall bigger really the biggest and all things -- let all go dear so comes love

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.

We can never be born enough.

Do not hate or fear the artist in yourselves... Honor and love him...do not try to possess him. Trust him as nobly as you trust tomorrow. Only the artist in yourself is more truthful than the night.

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

Exists no miracle mightier than this: to feel.

You and I are more than you and I because it's we.

Really unreal world, will you perhaps do the breathing for me while I am away?

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

When skies are hanged and oceans drowned, the single secret will still be man

you said Is there anything which is dead or alive more beautiful than my body,to have in your fingers (trembling ever so little)? Looking into your eyes Nothing,i said,except the air of spring smelling of never and forever. ....and through the lattice which moved as if a hand is touched by a hand(which moved as though fingers touch a girl's breast, lightly) Do you believe in always,the wind said to the rain I am too busy with my flowers to believe,the rain answered

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

Your head is a living forest full of songbirds.

wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a far better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers.

i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows. i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling -firm-smooth ness and which i will again and again and again kiss, i like kissing this and that of you, i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs, and possibly i like the thrill of under me you so quite new.

The symbol of all art is the Prism. The goal is unrealism. The method is destructive. To break up the white light of objective realism, into the secret glories which it contains.

It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing.

Someone asked me what home was and all I could think of were the stars on the tip of your tongue, the flowers sprouting from your mouth, the roots entwined in the gaps between your fingers, the ocean echoing inside of your ribcage.

And the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love

The artist is not a man who describes, but a man who feels.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.

The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.

Life ,for eternal us,is now

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

The three saddest things are the ill wanting to be well, the poor wanting to be rich, and the constant traveler saying 'anywhere but here'.

may i be i is the only prayer--not may i be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong today... may i be me....five foot eleven, brown hair/eyed, smart, serious, happy, frustrated, impatient, joyful, running, sleeping, smiling, eating, trying, believing, listening, being & becoming.

suppose Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), It's always our self we find in the sea.

Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.

you shall above all things be glad and young For if you're young,whatever life you wear it will become you;and if you are glad whatever's living will yourself become.

time is a tree (this life one leaf) but love is the sky and i am for you just so long and long enough

-tomorrow is our permanent address and there they’ll scarcely find us(if they do, we’ll move away still further:into now

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.

n OthI n g can s urPas s the m y SteR y of s tilLnes s

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.

here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Laughing is just another way of showing people your wise

There is no music unless the drum and the drummer are one.

May my heart always be open to little birds, who are the secrets of living. Whatever they sing is better than to know. And if men should not hear them - then men are old.

I'd rather have two good friends, than 500,000 admirers.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness

Only by you my heart always moves.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

Progress is a comfortable disease.

it may not always be so; and i say that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch his heart, as mine in time not far away; if on another's face your sweet hair lay in such a silence as i know,or such great writhing words as, uttering overmuch, stand helplessly before the spirit at bay; if this should be, i say if this should be- you of my heart, send me a little word; that i may go unto him, and take his hands, saying, Accept all happiness from me. Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems

life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis

...remember one thing only: that it's you-nobody else-who determines your destiny and decides your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.

Because you aren't afraid to kiss the dirt (and consequently dare to climb the sky)

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. Anaïs Nin I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved. George Eliot Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star.

Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.

I love you much most beautiful darling more than anyone on the earth and I like you better than everything in the sky.

i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (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) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any--lifted from the no of all nothing--human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

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

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.

Love is the whole and more than all.

It takes three to make a child.

The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.

You have played, (I think) And broke the toys you were fondest of, And are a little tired now; Tired of things that break, and— Just tired. So am I.

Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to most people?

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star.

Nobody loses all the time.

Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.

great men burn bridges before they come to them

The eyes of my eyes are opened.

twice I have lived forever in a smile

Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

The sweet small clumsy feet of april came into the ragged meadow of my soul.

there's time for laughing and there's time for crying— for hoping for despair for peace for longing —a time for growing and a time for dying: a night for silence and a day for singing but more than all(as all your more than eyes tell me)there is a time for timelessness

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

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

may I be I is the only prayer--not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong.

Sweet springtime is my time is your time is our time for springtime is love time and viva sweet love.

The hardest fight a man has to fight is to live in a world where every single day someone is trying to make you someone you do not want to be--

(existing's tricky:but to live's a gift)

Lovers alone wear sunlight.

A pretty girl who is naked / is worth a million statues

Who can tell truth from falsehood any more? I say it, and you feel it in your hearts: no man or woman on this big small earth. How should our sages miss the mark of life, and our most skillful players lose the game? your hearts will tell you, as my heart has told me: because all know, and no one understands.

Unbeing dead isn't being alive.

So far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was, is, and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality.