100 Selected Poems Quotes

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea.”
― e.e. cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“Love is the whole and more than all.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“Always it’s Spring)and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“What if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave,
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“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 unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“Nobody loses all the time.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“the poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople... you and i are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty . how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover


thou answerest




them only with


spring)”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“god's terrible face brighter than a spoon
collects the image of one fatal word;
so that my life(which liked the sun and the moon)
resembles something that has not occurred:
i am a birdcage without any bird
a collar looking for a dog a kiss
without lips;a prayer lacking any knees
but something beats within my shirt to prove
he is undead who living noone is.
I have never loved you dear as now i love.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“for every mile the feet go
the heart goes nine”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“if i

or anybody don't
know where it her his

my next meal's coming from
i say to hell with that
that doesn't matter (and if

he she it or everybody gets a
bellyful without
lifting my finger i say to hell
with that i

say that doesn't matter) but
if somebody
or you are beautiful or
deep or generous what
i say is

whistle that
sing that yell that spell
that out big (bigger than cosmic
rays w ar earthquakes famine or the ex

prince of whoses diving into
a whatses to rescue miss nobody's
probably handbag) because i say that's not

swell (get me) babe not (understand me) lousy
kid that's something else my sweet (i feel that's

true)”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“when god lets my body be

From each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom

the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing

a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes

will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow

Into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass

their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be

With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“i St
ep

into the not
merely immeasurable into
the mightily alive the
dear beautiful eternal night”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“...we're a mystery which will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before...”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any–lifted from the no of all nothing–human merely being doubt unimaginable You?”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“Accept all happiness from me.

Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird

sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

in the lost lands”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“tomorrow is our permanent address”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“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 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”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“lady through whose profound and fragile lips the sweet small clumsy feet of April came into the ragged meadow of my soul.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“the blond absence of any program except last and always and first to live makes unimportant what i and you believe;”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“[you shall above all things be glad and young]

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.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man’s
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation’s dead undoom.

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

E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems ‎(Grove Press, January 10, 1994)”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“gee i like to think of dead"

gee i like to think of dead it means nearer because deeper
firmer since darker than little round water at one end of
the well       it's too cool to be crooked and it's too firm
to be hard but it's sharp and it's thick and it loves,      every
old thing falls in rosebugs and jackknives and kittens and
pennies they all sit there looking at each other having the
fastest time because they've never met before

dead's more even than how many ways of sitting on

your head your unnatural hair has in the morning

dead's clever too like POF goes the alarm off and the
little striker having the best time tickling away every-
body's brain so everybody just puts out their finger
and they stuff the poor thing all full of fingers

dead has a smile like the nicest man you've never met
who maybe winks at you in a streetcar and you pretend
you don't but really you do see and you are My how
glad he winked and hope he'll do it again

or if it talks about you somewhere behind your back it
makes your neck feel all pleasant and stoopid      and if
dead says may i have this one and was never intro-
duced you say Yes because you know you want it to
dance with you and it wants to and it can dance and
Whocares

dead's fine like hands do you see that water flowerpots
in windows but they live higher in their house than
you so that's all you see but you don't want to

dead's happy like the way underclothes All so differ-
ently solemn and inti and sitting on one string

dead never says my dear,Time for your musiclesson
and you like music and to have somebody play who
can but you know you never can and why have to?

dead's nice like a dance where you danced simple hours
and you take all your prickley-clothes off and squeeze-
into-largeness without one word      and you lie still as
anything      in largeness and this largeness begins to
give you,the dance all over again and you,feel all again
all over the way men you liked made you feel when they
touched you(but that's not all)because largeness tells
you so you can feel what you made,men feel when,you
touched,them

dead's sorry like a thistlefluff-thing which goes land-
ing away all by himself on somebody's roof or some-
thing where who-ever-heard-of-growing and nobody
expects you to anyway

dead says come with me he says(and why ever not)into
the round well and see the kitten and the penny and
the jackknife and the rosebug
                                and you say Sure you
say  (like that)  sure i'll come with you you say for i
like kittens i do and jackknives i do and pennies i do
and rosebugs i do

E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems. (Grove Press, January 10, 1994) Originally published 1954.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“King Christ,this world is all aleak;
and lifepreservers there are none:
and waves which only He may walk
Who dared to call Himself a man.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“Without a heart the animal
is very very kind
so kind it wouldn’t like a soul
and couldn’t use a mind.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“love’s to giving as to keeping’s give;
as yes is to if,love is to yes”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“a man who had fallen among thieves lay by the roadside on his back dressed in fifteenthrate ideas wearing a round jeer for a hat fate per a somewhat more than less emancipated evening had in return for consciousness endowed him with a changeless grin whereon a dozen staunch and leal citizens did graze at pause then fired by hypercivic zeal sought newer pastures or because swaddled with a frozen brook of pinkest vomit out of eyes which noticed nobody he looked as if he did not care to rise one hand did nothing on the vest its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt while the mute trouserfly confessed a button solemnly inert. Brushing from whom the stiffened puke i put him all into my arms and staggered banged with terror through a million billion trillion stars”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems