Marianne Craig Moore (1887–1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit.
Source: Wikipedia (via CC-BY-SA license) • READ: Works by Marianne Moore
A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Authors & Writing
As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Trust
Poetry is all nouns and verbs.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Language
When one cannot appraise out of one’s own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Judging, Judges, Judgment
Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Egotism, Ego
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
—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
Topics: Peace
Originality is … a by-product of sincerity.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Originality
Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Independence
It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Indecision, Decisions
We are suffering from too much sarcasm.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Criticism, Critics
You’re not free until you’ve been made captive by supreme belief.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Belief, Faith
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Silence, Feelings
My father used to say superior people never make long visits.
—Marianne Moore
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Mark Van Doren American Poet, Critic
Alice Walker American Novelist, Activist
Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
Maya Angelou American Poet
Stephen Vincent Benet American Poet
Annie Dillard American Writer
Langston Hughes American Poet, Writer
Ezra Pound American Poet, Critic
William Carlos Williams American Poet, Novelist, Cultural Historian
Sara Teasdale American Poet