When it comes to poetry, few names are as recognizable as E. E. Cummings. A master of the form, Cummings’ poems are known for their playful and inventive language, as well as their insightful commentary on the human condition. He left behind a treasure trove of quotes that are as witty as they are wise. Here are some of the best quotes from E. E. Cummings that will inspire you to think outside the box.
A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.
E. E. Cummings
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
E. E. Cummings
If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.
E. E. Cummings
I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.
E. E. Cummings
At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.
E. E. Cummings
Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.
E. E. Cummings
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.
E. E. Cummings
I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.
E. E. Cummings
Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.
E. E. Cummings
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
E. E. Cummings
If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.
E. E. Cummings
I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.
E. E. Cummings
At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.
E. E. Cummings
Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.
E. E. Cummings
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.
E. E. Cummings
I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.
E. E. Cummings
Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.
E. E. Cummings
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
E. E. Cummings
A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.
E. E. Cummings
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.
E. E. Cummings
Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.
E. E. Cummings
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.
E. E. Cummings
Listen; there’s a hell of a good universe next door: let’s go.
E. E. Cummings
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
E. E. Cummings
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
Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own.
E. E. Cummings
Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.
E. E. Cummings
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.
E. E. Cummings
