I'd rather have two good friends, than 500,000 admirers.
E. E. CummingsRead
Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.
Interpretation
Each person must live their own life and take responsibility for their own existence.
E. E. Cummings' quote emphasizes the importance of individual agency and personal responsibility in life. It suggests that we are each uniquely responsible for our own experiences and cannot live for others, nor can they live for us. This realization is crucial for embracing the authenticity of one's own existence and the necessity of self-awareness in living a fulfilling life.
In practice
During a graduation speech to encourage students to follow their dreams.
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.
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
When god decided to invent everything he took one reath bigger than a circustent and everything began
The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.
If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.
Dogs are my favorite role models. I want to work like a dog, doing what I was born to do with joy and purpose. I want to play like a dog, with total, jolly abandon. I want to love like a dog, with unabashed devotion and complete lack of concern about what people do for a living, how much money they have, or how much they weigh. The fact that we still live with dogs, even when we don't have to herd or hunt our dinner, gives me hope for humans and canines alike.
For better or for worse, I've watched people die in front of me. I see how they are in the end. And they're not cynical. In the end, they wanna hold somebody's hand. And that's real to me.
Life doesn't stop after losing someone, but it goes on without them differently.
In San Francisco - life goes on. Hope rises and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain. The sound of music floats down a dark street. A young girl looks out a window and wishes she were married. A drunk sleeps under a bridge. It is tomorrow.
I mean you're given all these lessons for the unimportant things--piano-playing, typing. You're given years and years of lessons in how to balance equations, which Lord knows you will never have to do in normal life. But how about parenthood? Or marriage, either, come to think of it. Before you can drive a car you need a state-approved course of instruction, but driving a car is nothing, nothing, compared to living day in and day out with a husband and raising up a new human being.
When I came home, my kids wouldn't know if I went 0-for-4 or 4-for-4. I do not like to lose at anything, but I wouldn't be angry all day... Once I left the stadium, it was over with.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.