1.
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
2.
Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.
Marianne Moore
3.
Your thorns are the best part of you.
Marianne Moore
4.
Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.
Marianne Moore
5.
Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.
Marianne Moore
6.
Camels are snobbish
and sheep, unintelligent; water buffaloes, neurasthenic--
even murderous.
Reindeer seem over-serious.
Marianne Moore
7.
Omissions are not accidents.
Marianne Moore
8.
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.
Marianne Moore
9.
The hands are the heart's messengers.
Marianne Moore
10.
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
Marianne Moore
11.
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
12.
The heart that gives, gathers.
Marianne Moore
13.
Superior people never make long visits.
Marianne Moore
14.
Conscious writing can be the death of poetry.
Marianne Moore
15.
A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
Marianne Moore
16.
Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time.
Marianne Moore
17.
War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.
Marianne Moore
18.
One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express.
Marianne Moore
19.
The mind is an enchanting thing.
Marianne Moore
20.
Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.
Marianne Moore
21.
The power of the visible is the invisible.
Marianne Moore
22.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.
Marianne Moore
23.
There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.
Marianne Moore
24.
You're not free until you've been made captive by supreme belief.
Marianne Moore
25.
Wolf's wool is the best of wool, / but it cannot be sheared because / the wolf will not comply.
Marianne Moore
26.
Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity.
Marianne Moore
27.
Excess is the common substitute for energy.
Marianne Moore
28.
If we can't be cordial to these creatures' fleece, I think that we deserve to freeze.
Marianne Moore
29.
The Irish say your trouble is their trouble and your joy their joy? I wish I could believe it; I am troubled, I'm dissatisfied, I'm Irish.
Marianne Moore
30.
I'm troubled. I'm dissatisfied. I'm Irish.
Marianne Moore
31.
We Call Them the Brave who likely were reluctant to be brave.
Marianne Moore
32.
When we think we don't like art it is because it is artificial art.
Marianne Moore
33.
I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.
Marianne Moore
34.
the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
Marianne Moore
35.
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
36.
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
37.
It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.
Marianne Moore
38.
Unconfusion submits
its confusion to proof; it's
not a Herod's oath that cannot change.
Marianne Moore
39.
When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use.
Marianne Moore
40.
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
41.
I believe verbal felicity is the fruit of ardor, of diligence, and of refusing to be false.
Marianne Moore
42.
I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.
Marianne Moore
43.
One must be as clear as one's natural reticence allows one to be.
Marianne Moore
44.
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.
Marianne Moore
45.
O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven-of silk-worm size or immense; at times invisible. Felicitous phenomenon!
Marianne Moore
46.
[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
47.
At all events there is in Brooklyn
something that makes me feel at home.
Marianne Moore
48.
The weak overcomes its/ menace, the strong over-/comes itself.
Marianne Moore
49.
There never was a war that was not inward.
Marianne Moore
50.
Does it follow that because there are poisonous toadstools
which resemble mushrooms, both are dangerous?
Marianne Moore
