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… and down they forgot as up they grew.

—e. e. cummings

growth

About e. e. cummings

Portrait of e. e. cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), commonly known as e e cummings or E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. During World War I, he worked as an ambulance driver and was imprisoned in an internment camp, which provided the basis...

More quotations from e. e. cummings

More quotations tagged with “growth”

When a child first catches adults out—when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just—his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

—John Steinbeck

justice wisdom learning intelligence safety gods childhood growth lying parental infallibility

History

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    Previous wording
    . . . and down they forgot as up they grew.