American poet (1887–1972)
Marianne Moore (15 November 1887 – 5 February 1972) was a Modernist American poet and writer. For her Collected Poems (1951), she received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Alternative Names:
Marianne Craig Moore
From Wikidata (CC0)
Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.
Quotes
"The Student"
“In America,” began
the lecturer, “everyone must have a
degree. The French do not think that
all can have it, they don’t say everyone
must go to college.” We
incline to feel, here,
that although it may be unnecessary
to know fifteen languages.
one degree is not too much. With us, a
school — like the singing tree of which
the leaves were mouths that sang in concert — is both a tree of knowledge
and of liberty — seen in the unanimity of college
mottoes, lux et veritas,
Christo et ecclesiae, sapiet
felici. It may be that we
have not knowledge, just opinions, that we
are undergraduates,
not students; we know
we have been told with smiles, by expatriates
of whom we had asked, “When will
your experiment be finished?” “Science
is never finished.” Secluded
from domestic strife, Jack Bookworm led a
college life, says Goldsmith;
and here also as
in France or Oxford, study is beset with
dangers — with bookworms, mildews,
and complaisancies. But someone in New
England has known enough to say
that the student is patience personified,
a variety
of hero, “patient
of neglect and of reproach," — who can "hold by
himself.” You can’t beat hens to
make them lay. Wolf’s wool is the best of wool,
but it cannot be sheared, because
the wolf will not comply. With knowledge as
with wolves’ surliness,
the student studies
voluntarily, refusing to be less
than individual. He
“gives him opinion and then rests upon it”;
he renders service when there is
no reward, and is too reclusive for
some things to seem to touch
him; not because he
has no feeling but because he has so much.
Do the poet and scientist not work analogously? Both are willing to waste effort. To be hard on himself is one ...of the main strengths of each. Each is attentive to clues, each must narrow the choice, must strive for precision. As George Grosz says, “In art there is no place for gossip and but a small place for the satirist.” The objective is fertile procedure. Is it not? Jacob Bronowski says in The Saturday Evening Post that science is not a mere collection of discoveries, but that science is the process of discovering. In any case it’s not established once and for all; it’s evolving.
TO VICTOR HUGO OF MY CROW PLUTO
“Even when the bird is walking we know that it has wings.” — VICTOR HUGO
Of:
my crow
Pluto,
the true
Plato,
azzurronegro
green-blue rainbow — Victor Hugo, it is true
we know that the crow
“has wings,” however pigeon-toe-
inturned on grass.
We do. (adagio)
Vivorosso
“corvo,”
although
con dizionario
io parlo
Italiano — this pseudo
Esperanto
which, savio
ucello
you speak too — my vow and motto
(botto e totto)
io giuro
è questo
credo:
lucro
è peso morto.
And so
dear crow — gioièllo
mio — I have to
let you go;
a bel bosco
generoso,
tuttuto vagabondo, s
erafino uvaceo
Sunto,
oltremarino
verecondo
Plato, addio.
(((((Impromptu equivalents for esperanto madinusa (made in U.S.A.) for those who might not resent them. azzurro-negro: blue-black vivorosso: lively con dizionario: with dictionary savio ucello: knowing bird botto e totto: vow and motto io giuro: I swear è questo credo: is this credo lucro è peso morto: profit is a dead weight gioièllo mio: my jewel a bel bosco: to lovely woods tuttuto vagabondo: complete gypsy serafino uvaceo: grape-black seraph sunto: in short verecondo: modest))))