Explore Quotes by Marianne Moore

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

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

Among animals, one has a sense of humor. Humor saves a few steps, it saves years.

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.

I wonder what Adam and Eve think of it by this time.

Excess is the common substitute for energy.

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

Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this.

Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.

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."

My father used to say, "Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellows grave, or the glass flowers at Harvard."

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.

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

Poetry_x000D_..._x000D_... a place for the genuine,_x000D_Hands that can grasp, eyes_x000D_that can dilate, hair that can rise

Assign Yogi Berra to Cape Canaveral; he could handle any missile.

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

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

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

There never was a war that was not inward.

Superior people never make long visits.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.