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. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
... imaginary gardens with real toads in them ... ... if you demand on one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, then you are interested in poetry. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
Victory won't come to me unless I go to it; a grape tendril ties a knot in knots till knotted thirty times — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
“Do the poet and scientist not work analogously? Both are willing to waste effort. To be hard on himself is one ...of the main… — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
Camels are snobbish and sheep, unintelligent; water buffaloes, neurasthenic-- even murderous. Reindeer seem over-serious. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
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… — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
I believe verbal felicity is the fruit of ardor, of diligence, and of refusing to be false. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
Only imagination that towers can reproduce evanescence and render rigidity flexible. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image