Best 114 quotes of Marianne Moore on MyQuotes

Poetry, that is to say the poetic, is a primal necessity.

Psychology, which explains everything, Explains nothing, And we are still in doubt.

repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea; the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.

So wary as to disappear for centuries and reappear but never caught, the unicorn has been preserved by an unmatched device wrought like the work of expert blacksmiths.

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!

that which is impossible to force, it is impossible to hinder.

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

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.

The deft white-stockinged dance in thick-soled shoes! Denmark's sanctuaried Jews!

The enslaver is enslaved, the hater, harmed.

The hands are the heart's messengers.

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.

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.

the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bell buoys, advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which dropped things are bound to sink-- in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor consciousness.

The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.

The power of the visible is the invisible.

The prey of fear, he, always curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk, work partly done, says to the alternating blaze, "Again the sun! anew each day; and new and new and new, that comes into and steadies my soul.

There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness.

There never was a war that was not inward.

There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.

the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.

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

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

The sweet air coming into your house on a fine day, from water etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish.

The weak overcomes its/ menace, the strong over-/comes itself.

[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.

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

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

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

Victory won't come to me unless I go to it; a grape tendril ties a knot in knots till knotted thirty times

War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.

We are suffering from too much sarcasm.

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.

We Call Them the Brave who likely were reluctant to be brave.

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

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?

What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.

When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.

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

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

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

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

Writing is an undertaking for the modest.

You are not male nor female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man.

You're not free until you've been made captive by supreme belief.

Your thorns are the best part of you.

Yule—Yul log for the Christmas-fire tale-spinner—of fairy tales that can come true: Yul Brynner.

America where there is the little old ramshackle victoria in the south, where cigars are smoked on the street in the north; where there are no proof-readers, no silkworms, no digressions; the wild man's land; grassless, linksless, languageless country in which letters are written not in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand, but in plain American which cats and dogs can read!

BY DISPOSITION OF ANGELS Messengers much like ourselves? Explain it. Steadfastness the darkness makes explicit? Something heard most clearly when not near it? Above particularities, these unparticularities praise cannot violate. One has seen, in such steadiness never deflected, how by darkness a star is perfected. Star that does not ask me if I see it? Fir that would not wish me to uproot it? Speech that does not ask me if I hear it? Mysteries expound mysteries. Steadier than steady, star dazzling me, live and elate, no need to say, how like some we have known; too like her, too like him, and a-quiver forever.

Blessed is the man who “takes the risk of a decision” — asks himself the question: “Would it solve the problem? Is it right as I see it? Is it in the best interests of all?