Explore Quotes by Marianne Moore

My father used to say superior people never make long visits.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

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

It is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment without having a critic, forever, like the old man of the sea, upon his back.

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

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.

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.

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

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.

Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time.

If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist.

Your thorns are the best part of you.

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.

There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness.

Not 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.

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

Poetry is a peerless proficiency of the imagination.

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.

O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven-of silk-worm size or immense; at times invisible. Felicitous phenomenon!

I, too, dislike it. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine.