Marianne Moore
Poetry is all nouns and verbs.Collection: Poetry
Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.Collection: Independence
As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.Collection: Trust
Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.Collection: Art
If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist.Collection: Communication
Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time.Collection: Beauty
I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.Collection: Poetry
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.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.
It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
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.
We are suffering from too much sarcasm.
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.
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.
Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.
My father used to say superior people never make long visits.
A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
Superior people never make long visits.
There never was a war that was not inward.
You're not free until you've been made captive by supreme belief.
Psychology which explains everything explains nothing, and we are still in doubt.
Your thorns are the best part of you.Collection: Personality
Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.Collection: Being Yourself
The heart that gives, gathers.Collection: Life
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.Collection: Silence
Omissions are not accidents.Collection: Omission
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.Collection: Art
When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use.Collection: Time
Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity.Collection: Ego
The hands are the heart's messengers.Collection: Heart
There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.Collection: Peace
Writing is an undertaking for the modest.Collection: Writing
Revision is its own reward.Collection: Revision
Poetry, that is to say the poetic, is a primal necessity.Collection: Poetic
We Call Them the Brave who likely were reluctant to be brave.Collection: Brave
One detects creative power by its capacity to conquer one's detachment.Collection: Creative
The enslaver is enslaved, the hater, harmed.Collection: Forgiveness
Excess is the common substitute for energy.Collection: Energy
Conscious writing can be the death of poetry.Collection: Writing
There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness.Collection: Poetry
Blessed the geniuses who know / that egomania is not a duty.Collection: Blessed
My father used to say, "Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellows grave, or the glass flowers at Harvard."Collection: Father
Hindered characters / seldom have mothers / in Irish stories, but they all have grandmothers.Collection: Mother
We don't like flowers that do not wilt; they must die, and nine she-camel hairs aid memory.Collection: Memories
Men are monopolists of "stars, garters, buttons and other shining baubles"- unfit to be the guardians of another person's happiness.Collection: Marriage
If we can't be cordial to these creatures' fleece, I think that we deserve to freeze.Collection: Thinking
Honesty - however dangerous - should be as valuable as radium it seems to me.Collection: Honesty
It is in general true that in order to create works of art one has to have leisure. On the other hand I think that one needs to experience resistance in a practical sense, and even that which is poignant to bring out what makes easy reading for others. Too much deprivation of course, means death.Collection: Art
The self does not realize itself most fully when self-realization is its most constant aim.Collection: Self