Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Marianne Moore
53 quotes
“Poetry is a magic of pauses ... not a thing of tunes, but of heightened consciousness.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Poetry and Criticism - American Peoples Encyclopedia , Groller , New York 1965
“One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Idiosyncrasy and Technique 1958
“Precision, economy of statement, logic employed to ends that are disinterested ... liberate the imagination.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Forward to Marianne Moore Reader 1961
“You know I don't really understand much of my poetry myself. Of course, I was convinced I understood it when I wrote it !”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Malvina Hoffman in her Memoir - Yesterday is Tomorrow 1961
“I don't consider In Distrust of Merits a poem. It's just a burst of feelings. It's emotion recorded, a 'haphazard form ' a protest.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Grace Shulman. Quarterly Review of Literature 1969
“I think books are chiefly responsible for my dogged self determined efforts to write; books & verisimilitude; I like to describe things.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Essay - 1957 Subject, Predicate, Object
“For me, a poem starts when a felicitious phrase springs to mind.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never plan a stanza, words cluster like chromosomes determining the procedure, later, I may influence or thin it.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Donald Hall in November 1960, pub.'Paris Review' The Art of Poetry, no 26 (1961)
“Poetry is: a classifying, a botanizing, a voracity of contemplation, a pleasure, an indulgence, an infatuation in which the actual is a deft benficence.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Moore's Review in Criterion 1936 of Wallace Stevens Ideas of Order
“I have been influenced by the Bible, Bach's music and contemporarily by Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams and Hopkins.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Miss Gray in 1936 in response for a biographical sketch. Reproduced in Marianne Moore - A Literary Life by Charles Molesworth, Macmillan, New York 1990
“A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Writers at Work, Second Series, ed. George Plimpton (1963)
“Omissions are not accidents.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1967), Author's note, p. vi
“Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Marianne Moore, Poet of Affection (1977) by Pamela White Hadas, p. 6
“War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comment" in The Dial, No. 86 (April 1929)
“He fights and he writes. Is there something I have missed? He is a smiling pugilist.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Record jacket for I Am the Greatest! by Cassius Clay (Columbia Records, 1963). The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore (1986) appx, p. 660
“I have learned more from Ezra Pound about writing than from anyone else.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Letters of Ezra Pound 1950
“Music should be directed by the ear, poetry by the imagination”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review -Jean Gaingne -New & Selected Poems 1967
“There is an inevitable connection between music and poetry.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Poetry Review 26 Sept 1935
“I tend to write in patterned arrangement with rhymes.. I try to secure an effect of flowing continuity and the correspondence between verse and music.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Oxford Anthology of American Literature 1938
“I look upon verse as an exercise in composition.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Authors of 1951 Speaking for Themselves NY Herald Tribue 7 Oct 1951
“Whatever it is.. poem.. play, story..it must hold attention.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Poetry as Expression - The Writer April 1962
“Yes, I believe in prayer, as a mystery which can endow one with more power perhaps than any other spiritual mystery, yet a mystery that cannot be exposited to a point where it is not a mystery.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I Believe in Prayer - - How Prayer helps me The Dial Press 1955
“One may be pardoned, yes I know one may, for love for love, undying (Ephesians 6:24)”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Blessed the man whose faith is different from possessiveness - of a kind not framed by 'things which do appear' ( Hebrews 11:3)”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is hate's crown beneath which all is death; there's love without which none is king.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I conquered in myself what causes war”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Homer, existence is flawed; transcendence, conditional; ' the journey from sin to redemption, perpetual',”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tell me, Tell me where might there be a refuge for me from egocentricity and its propensity to bisect, mis-state, misunderstand and obliterate continuity?”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven — of silkworm size or immense; at times invisible. Felicitous phenomenon!”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: O To Be A Dragon" in O To Be A Dragon (1957)
“You are not male nor female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sun" from Tell Me, Tell Me (1966)
“Consume hostility; employ your weapon in this meeting-place of surging enmity! Insurgent feet shall not outrun multiplied flames, O Sun.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sun" from Tell Me, Tell Me (1966)
“Poetry I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle, Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you demand on the other hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, you are interested in poetry.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Hebrew poetry is, prose with a sort of heightened consciousness' Ecstasy affords the occasion expediency, determines the form”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“that which is impossible to force, it is impossible to hinder.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My father used to say "Superior people never make long visits.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is a strange fraternity — these sea lions and land lions, land unicorns and sea unicorns; the lion civilly rampant, tame and concessive like the long-tailed bear of Ecuador — the lion standing up against this screen of woven air which is the forest: the unicorn also, on its hind legs in reciprocity.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So wary as to disappear for centuries and reappear but never caught, the unicorn has been preserved by an unmatched device wrought like the work of expert blacksmiths ...”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He's not out seeing a sight but the rock crystal thing to see — the startling El Greco brimming with inner light — that covets nothing that it has let go. This then you may know as the hero.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is our innocence, what is our guilt? All are naked, none is safe.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty is everlasting and dust is for a time.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Distrust of Merits" (1944)
“Some speak of things we know, as new; And you, of things unknown as things forgot.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We Call Them the Brave who likely were reluctant to be brave.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What of it? We call them brave perhaps? Yes; what if the time should come when no one will fight for anything and there's nothing of worth to save.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maine should be pleased that its animal is not a waverer, and rather than fight, lets the primed quill fall. Shallow oppressor, intruder, insister, you have found a resister.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A symbol from the first, of mastery, experiments such as Hippocrates made and substituted for vague speculation stayed the ravages of plague.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Staff and effigy of the animal which by shedding its skin is a sign of renewal — the symbol of medicine.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problems is mastered — insupportably tiring when it was impending. Deliverance accounts for what sounds like axiom. The Gordian knot need not be cut.”
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source