Marianne Moore

Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time.

— Marianne Moore

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

I have been influenced by the Bible, Bach's music and contemporarily by Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams and Hopkins.

— Marianne Moore

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

— Marianne Moore

Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.

— Marianne Moore

War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.

— Marianne Moore

I look upon verse as an exercise in composition.

— Marianne Moore

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

O to be a dragon, Felicitous phenomenon!

— Marianne Moore

You are not male nor female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man.

— Marianne Moore

Consume hostility; multiplied flames, O Sun.

— Marianne Moore

Poetry I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond it after all, a place for the genuine.

— Marianne Moore

If you demand on the other hand, genuine, you are interested in poetry.

— Marianne Moore

'Hebrew poetry is, the occasion expediency, determines the form

— Marianne Moore

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

— Marianne Moore

My father used to say "Superior people never make long visits."

— Marianne Moore

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

— Marianne Moore

This is a strange fraternity — these sea lions and land lions, the unicorn also, on its hind legs in reciprocity.

— Marianne Moore

So wary as to disappear for centuries and reappear wrought like the work of expert blacksmiths ...

— Marianne Moore

He's not outas the hero.

— Marianne Moore

What is our innocence,naked, none is safe.

— Marianne Moore

Beauty is everlastingand dust is for a time.

— Marianne Moore

Some speak of things we know, as new; And you, of things unknown as things forgot.

— Marianne Moore

We Call Them the Brave who likely were reluctant to be brave.

— Marianne Moore

Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.

— Marianne Moore

What of it? We call them brave and there's nothing of worth to save.

— Marianne Moore

Maine should be pleased that its animal insister, you have found a resister.

— Marianne Moore

A symbol from the first, of mastery, the ravages of plague.

— Marianne Moore

Staff and effigy of the animal the symbol of medicine.

— Marianne Moore

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

— Marianne Moore

The problems is mastered — insupportably The Gordian knot need not be cut.

— Marianne Moore

Love, ah Love, when your slipknot's drawn, One can but say, "Farewell, good sense."

— Marianne Moore

We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.

— Marianne Moore

Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time.

— Marianne Moore

... imaginary gardens with real toads in them ...

— Marianne Moore

Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.

— Marianne Moore

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

— Marianne Moore