Marianne Moore Quotes

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.

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

Hate-hardened heart, O heart of iron
iron is iron till it is rust.
There never was a war that was
not inward; I must
fight till I have conquered in myself what
causes war, but I would not believe it.
I inwardly did nothing.
O Iscariot-like crime!
Beauty is everlasting
and dust is for a time.

TO A GIRAFFE
If it is unpermissible, in fact fatal
to be personal and undesirable
to be literal — detrimental as well
if the eye is not innocent-does it mean that
one can live only on top leaves that are small
reachable only by a beast that is tall? — of which the giraffe is the best example — the unconversational animal.
When plagued by the psychological,
a creature can be unbearable
that could have been irresistible;
or to be exact, exceptional
since less conversational
than some emotionally-tied-in-knots animal.
After all
consolations of the metaphysical
can be profound. In Homer, existence
is flawed; transcendence, conditional;
“the journey from sin to redemption, perpetual.

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 ...

I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of fabric is governed by gravity.

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

Truly as the sun can rot or mend, love can make one bestial or make a beast a man.

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

There is hate's crown beneath which all is death; there's love without which none
is king.

The problems is mastered — insupportably tiring when it was impending. Deliverance accounts for what sounds like axiom. <p> The Gordian knot need not be cut.

Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.

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

Psychology which explains everything, explains nothing.

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