Marianne Moore Quotes

104 Sourced Quotes

We don't like flowers that do
not wilt; they must die, and nine she-camel hairs aid memory.

Marianne Moore
What is our innocence, what is our guilt? All are naked, none is safe.

Marianne Moore
Truly as the sun can rot or mend, love can make one bestial or make a beast a man.

Marianne Moore
Why an inordinate interest in animals and athletes? They are subjects for art and exemplars of it, are they not? minding their own business. Pangolins, hornbills, pitchers, catchers, do not pry or prey— or prolong the conversation; do not make us self-conscious; look their best when caring least.

Marianne Moore
The self does not realize itself most fully when self-realization is its most constant aim.

Marianne Moore
The catnip that art is, or ignis fatuus, or drop on the cactus, does seem worth the martyrdom of pursuit.

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
The enslaver is
enslaved; the hater, harmed.

Marianne Moore
Wolf's wool is the best of wool,
but it cannot be sheared because
the wolf will not comply.

Marianne Moore
One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express.

Marianne Moore
Hindered characters
seldom have mothers
in Irish stories, but they all have grandmothers.

Marianne Moore
The world's an orphans' home. Shall we never have peace without sorrow? without pleas of the dying for help that won't come. O quiet form upon the dust, I cannot look and yet I must.

Marianne Moore
[The] whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so much confusion.

Marianne Moore
I never knew anyone who had a passion for words who had as much difficulty in saying things as I do. I very seldom say them in a manner I like. If I do it's because I don't know I'm trying.

Marianne Moore
Which of us has not been stunned by the beauty of an animal's skin or its flexibility in motion?

Marianne Moore
Honesty — however dangerous — should be as valuable as radium it seems to me.

Marianne Moore
Nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'—above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have
it.

Marianne Moore
O to be a dragon,
a symbol of the power of Heaven—of silkworm
size or immense; at times invisible.
Felicitous phenomenon!

Marianne Moore
Another armored animal — scale
lapping scale with spruce cone regularity until they form the uninterrupted central
tail row!

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

Marianne Moore
We should try to judge the work of others by the most that it is, and our own, if not by the least that it is, take the least into consideration.

Marianne Moore
Do the poet and scientist not work analogously? Both are willing to waste effort. To be hard on himself is one of the main strengths of each. Each is attentive to clues, each must narrow the choice, must strive for precision.

Marianne Moore
If emotion is strong enough, the words are unambiguous.

Marianne Moore
When we think we don't like art it is because it is artificial art.

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
Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast
each with a splendor
which man in all his vileness cannot
set aside; each with an excellence!

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
Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting and baseball is like writing. You can never tell with either how it will go...

Marianne Moore
Unconfusion submits
its confusion to proof; it's
not a Herod's oath that cannot change.

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

Marianne Moore