Marianne Moore

When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.

— Marianne Moore

One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express.

— Marianne Moore

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

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.

— Marianne Moore

“Do the poet and scientist not work analogously? Both are willing to waste effort. To be hard on himself is one ...of…

— Marianne Moore

Camels are snobbish and sheep, unintelligent; water buffaloes, neurasthenic-- even murderous. Reindeer seem over-serious.

— Marianne Moore

When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems…

— Marianne Moore

The hands are the heart's messengers.

— Marianne Moore

I believe verbal felicity is the fruit of ardor, of diligence, and of refusing to be false.

— Marianne Moore

Conscious writing can be the death of poetry.

— Marianne Moore

Only imagination that towers can reproduce evanescence and render rigidity flexible.

— Marianne Moore

Revision is its own reward.

— Marianne Moore

In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of…

— Marianne Moore

All are / naked, none is safe.

— Marianne Moore

It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.

— Marianne Moore

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

— Marianne Moore

repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea; the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.

— Marianne Moore

We prove, we do not explain, our birth,

— Marianne Moore

As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.

— Marianne Moore

The cynics in life are the people who are always trying to do things for people who don't want things done for…

— Marianne Moore

If you will tell me why the fen appears impassable, I then will tell you why I think that I can cross…

— Marianne Moore

The enslaver is enslaved, the hater, harmed.

— Marianne Moore

the small tuft of fronds or katydid legs above each eye, still numbering the units in each group; the shadbones regularly set…

— Marianne Moore

At all events there is in Brooklyn something that makes me feel at home.

— Marianne Moore

the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bell buoys, advances as usual, looking as if it were not that…

— Marianne Moore