Marianne Moore Quotes

Your thorns are the best part of you.
Marianne Moore
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
Marianne Moore
Superior people never make long visits.
Marianne Moore
Poetry is all nouns and verbs.
Marianne Moore
I'm troubled. I'm dissatisfied. I'm Irish.
Marianne Moore
Poetry is all nouns and verbs.
Marianne Moore
I'm troubled. I'm dissatisfied. I'm Irish.
Marianne Moore
When one is frank one's very presence is a compliment.
Marianne Moore
The enslaver is enslaved the hater harmed.
Marianne Moore
You're not free until you've been made captive by supreme belief.
Marianne Moore
As contagion of sickness makes sickness contagion of trust can make trust.
Marianne Moore
Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time.
Marianne Moore
I am hard to disgust, but a pretentious poet can do it
Marianne Moore
Yule—Yul log for the Christmas-fire tale-spinner—of fairy tales that can come true: Yul Brynner.
Marianne Moore
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.
Marianne Moore
You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability ratherthanan asset - that in view of the fact that spirit creates formwe are justified in supposingthat you must have brains. For you, a symbol of theunit, stiff and sharp,conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority andliking for everythingself-dependent, anything anambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, toattempt through sheerreserve, to confuse presumptions resulting fromobservation, is idle. You cannot make usthink you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you arebrilliant, itis not because your petals are the without-which-nothingof pre-eminence. Would you not, minusthorns, be a what-is-this, a mereperculiarity? They are not proof against a worm, theelements, or mildew;but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliancewithout co-ordination? Guarding theinfinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience tothe remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be re-membered too violently,your thorns are the best part of you.
Marianne Moore