e. e. cummings
time is a tree (this life one leaf) but love is the sky and i am for you just so long and long enoughCollection: Love Is
great men burn bridges before they come to themCollection: Men
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.Collection: Tired
Really unreal world, will you perhaps do the breathing for me while I am away?Collection: Breathing
You shall above all things be glad and young.Collection: Young
And the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh loveCollection: Love
A pretty girl who is naked / is worth a million statuesCollection: Beauty
who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss youCollection: Kissing
The sweet small clumsy feet of april came into the ragged meadow of my soul.Collection: Sweet
Seeker of truth follow no path all paths lead where truth is here.Collection: Path
An intelligent person fights for lost causes, realizing that others are merely effectsCollection: Fighting
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.Collection: Sweet
Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.Collection: 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.Collection: Art
Equality is what does not exist among mortals.Collection: Work
twice I have lived forever in a smileCollection: Forever
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)Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Art
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 loveCollection: Wise
Laughing is just another way of showing people your wiseCollection: Wise
Lovers alone wear sunlight.Collection: Love
As small as a world as large as alone.Collection: World
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 discussionCollection: Truth
Life ,for eternal us,is nowCollection: Eternal
it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderfulCollection: Spring
I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air Alive with closed eyes to dash against darknessCollection: Eye
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Romantic
life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesisCollection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Hands
most people are perfectly afraid of silenceCollection: Inspirational
Progress is a comfortable disease.Collection: Fear
suppose Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.Collection: Flower
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.Collection: Heart
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)Collection: I Love You
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'.Collection: Travel
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 rosesCollection: Love
may I be I is the only prayer--not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong.Collection: Life
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.Collection: Winter
I love you much most beautiful darling more than anyone on the earth and I like you better than everything in the sky.Collection: Beautiful
(existing's tricky:but to live's a gift)Collection: Tricky
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 timelessnessCollection: Eye
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--Collection: Fighting
The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.Collection: Artist
And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart I carry your heart [ i carry it in my heart ]Collection: Stars
Because you aren't afraid to kiss the dirt (and consequently dare to climb the sky)Collection: Kissing