Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore
Marianne Craig Moorewas an American Modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth15 November 1887
CityKirkwood, MO
CountryUnited States of America
Marianne Moore quotes about
beauty stars tears
Below the incandescent stars / below the incandescent fruit, / the strange experience of beauty; / its existence is too much; / it tears one to pieces / and each fresh wave of consciousness / is poison.
honesty compliment frank
When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.
forgiveness hate
The enslaver is enslaved, the hater, harmed.
foxes arctic
To wear the arctic fox you have to kill it.
poetic primal
Poetry, that is to say the poetic, is a primal necessity.
natural reticence clear
One must be as clear as one's natural reticence allows one to be.
creative conquer detachment
One detects creative power by its capacity to conquer one's detachment.
ocean sea bells
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.
eye legs faces
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
stars loss sky
[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.
heaven black magic
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.
firsts mastery made
A symbol from the first, of mastery, experiments such as Hippocrates made and substituted for vague speculation stayed the ravages of plague.
ties victory knots
Victory won't come to me unless I go to it; a grape tendril ties a knot in knots till knotted thirty times
blessed genius egomania
Blessed the geniuses who know / that egomania is not a duty.