Marianne Moore Quotes

104 Sourced Quotes

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.

Marianne Moore
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.

Marianne Moore
As contagion
of sickness makes sickness,
contagion of trust can make trust.

Marianne Moore
My father used to say,
'Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
or the glass flowers at Harvard.'

Marianne Moore
Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

Marianne Moore
It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing...

Marianne Moore
"The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint." Nor was he insincere in saying, "Make my house your inn." Inns are not residences.

Marianne Moore
Among animals, one has a sense of humor.
Humor saves a few steps, it saves years.

Marianne Moore
The enslaver is
enslaved; the hater, harmed.

Marianne Moore
I inwardly did nothing.
O Iscariot-like crime!

Marianne Moore
We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained in conformity with earth's and with heaven's logic: Be the devil's tool, resort to black magic, None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.

Marianne Moore
I have a passion for rhythm and accent, so blundered into versifying. Considering the stanza the unit, I came to hazard hyphens at the end of the line, but found that readers are distracted from the content by hyphens, so I try not to use them.

Marianne Moore
Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this.

Marianne Moore
What sap
went through that little thread to make the cherry red!

Marianne Moore
I wonder what Adam and Eve think of it by this time.

Marianne Moore
What is
there in being able
to say that one has dominated the stream in an attitude of
self-defense;

in proving that one has had the experience
of carrying a stick?

Marianne Moore
Only imagination that towers can reproduce evanescence and render rigidity flexible.

Marianne Moore
With its baby rivers and little towns, each with its abbey or its cathedral,
with voices – one voice perhaps, echoing through the transept
– the
criterion of suitability and convenience.

Marianne Moore
The cynics in life are the people who are always trying to do things for people who don't want things done for them.

Marianne Moore
The small tuft of fronds or katydid legs above each eye, still
numbering the units in each group;
the shadbones regularly set about the mouth, to droop or rise

Marianne Moore
I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.

Marianne Moore
They fought the enemy, we fight fat living and self-pity. Shine, o shine, unfalsifying sun, on this sick scene.

Marianne Moore
Does it follow that because there are poisonous toadstools
which resemble mushrooms, both are dangerous?

Marianne Moore
When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use.

Marianne Moore
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.

Marianne Moore