Top 120 Quotes & Sayings by Marianne Moore

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American poet Marianne Moore.
Last updated on November 8, 2024.
Marianne Moore

Marianne Craig Moore was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit.

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
My father used to say superior people never make long visits.
In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity. — © Marianne Moore
In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity.
You're not free until you've been made captive by supreme belief.
Poetry is all nouns and verbs.
If you will tell me why the fen appears impassable, I then will tell you why I think that I can cross it if I try.
When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time.
We are suffering from too much sarcasm.
Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.
If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist.
I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it. — © Marianne Moore
I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.
As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.
Superior people never make long visits.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.
Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.
It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.
Psychology which explains everything explains nothing, and we are still in doubt.
There never was a war that was not inward.
It is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment without having a critic, forever, like the old man of the sea, upon his back.
Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.
The enslaver is enslaved, the hater, harmed.
When we think we don't like art it is because it is artificial art.
We Call Them the Brave who likely were reluctant to be brave.
The mind is an enchanting thing is an enchanted thing, like the glaze on a katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion.
One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express.
The heart that gives, gathers.
The cynics in life are the people who are always trying to do things for people who don't want things done for them.
Conscious writing can be the death of poetry.
Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.
There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.
Only imagination that towers can reproduce evanescence and render rigidity flexible.
Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity.
To wear the arctic fox you have to kill it.
One detects creative power by its capacity to conquer one's detachment.
Life is energy, and energy is creativity. And even when individuals pass on, the energy is retained in the work of art, locked in it and awaiting release if only someone will take the time and the care to unlock it.
The hands are the heart's messengers. — © Marianne Moore
The hands are the heart's messengers.
Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.
All are / naked, none is safe.
Excess is the common substitute for energy.
... we do not admire what we cannot understand.
The power of the visible is the invisible.
War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.
Poetry is a peerless proficiency of the imagination.
the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
I believe verbal felicity is the fruit of ardor, of diligence, and of refusing to be false.
As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists. — © Marianne Moore
As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.
There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.
Omissions are not accidents.
When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use.
One must be as clear as one's natural reticence allows one to be.
The mind is an enchanting thing.
that which is impossible to force, it is impossible to hinder.
Wolf's wool is the best of wool, / but it cannot be sheared because / the wolf will not comply.
In a poem the words should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind.
Your thorns are the best part of you.
When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.
I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.
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