Marianne Moore Quotes - Page 2

The power of the visible is the invisible.

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

One must be as clear as one's natural reticence allows one to be.

Poetry is a peerless proficiency of the imagination.

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.

To wear the arctic fox you have to kill it.

As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.

The mind is an enchanting thing is an enchanted thing, like the glaze on a katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion.

There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness.

Blessed the geniuses who know / that egomania is not a duty.

that which is impossible to force, it is impossible to hinder.

the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

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

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

You're not free until you've been made captive by supreme belief.

Wolf's wool is the best of wool, / but it cannot be sheared because / the wolf will not comply.

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

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

... we do not admire what we cannot understand.

I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.

The mind is an enchanting thing.

When we think we don't like art it is because it is artificial art.

If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist.