Quotes about Marianne Moore

3 Sourced Quotes

"The free man... believes in destiny and believes that it has need of him," wrote Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher. "Destiny," added Marianne Moore, the spinster poet, when she quoted Buber. "Not fate." What is this distinction Moore takes such care to draw between destiny and fate?

Counter to the avalanche of messages from our culture, I recognize celibacy not as negation but as a joyous turning inward. Inebriate of air am I, / And debauchee of dew, wrote Emily Dickinson, most promiscuous of celibates. Opulence in asceticism, Marianne Moore wrote, a phrase that celebrates the solitary life even as it provides a sound bite for saving the planet.

The poet Marianne Moore famously wrote of 'real toads in imaginary gardens,' and the labyrinth offers us the possibility of being real creatures in symbolic space...In such spaces as the labyrinth we cross over [between real and imaginary spaces]; we are really travelling, even if the destination is only symbolic.