Complete Poems
A source page for quotes linked to Marianne Moore.
“The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.”
“Might verse not best confuse itself with fate?”
“I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war, but I would not believe it.”
“You are not male or female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man.”
“Who rides on a tiger can never dismount; asleep on an elephant, that is repose.”
“We prove, we do not explain, our birth.”
“Omissions are not accidents.”
“I'm troubled. I'm dissatisfied. I'm Irish.”
“Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.”
“What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.”
“You are not male nor female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man.”
“that which is impossible to force, it is impossible to hinder.”
“We Call Them the Brave who likely were reluctant to be brave.”
“One detects creative power by its capacity to conquer one's detachment.”
“One must be as clear as one's natural reticence allows one to be.”
“Poetry, that is to say the poetic, is a primal necessity.”
“To wear the arctic fox you have to kill it.”
“The enslaver is enslaved, the hater, harmed.”
“When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.”
“Wolf's wool is the best of wool, / but it cannot be sheared because / the wolf will not comply.”
“Blessed the geniuses who know / that egomania is not a duty.”
“Honesty - however dangerous - should be as valuable as radium it seems to me.”
“When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use.”
“Hindered characters / seldom have mothers / in Irish stories, but they all have grandmothers.”
“he who gives quickly gives twice / in nothing so much as in a letter.”
“The mind is an enchanting thing.”
“the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.”
“I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.”
“In a poem the words should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind.”