My father used to say superior people never make long visits.
—Marianne Moore
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
—Marianne Moore
As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Trust
Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Independence
You’re not free until you’ve been made captive by supreme belief.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Faith, Belief
It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Decisions, Indecision
Poetry is all nouns and verbs.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Language
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Silence, Feelings
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: Judgment, Judges, Judging
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
Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Egotism, Ego
We are suffering from too much sarcasm.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Criticism, Critics
Originality is … a by-product of sincerity.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Originality
A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
—Marianne Moore
Topics: Authors & Writing
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
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