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The cynics in life are the people who are always trying to do things for people who don't want things done for them.

Marianne Moore

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Marianne Moore
Age: 84 †
Born: 1887
Born: November 15
Died: 1972
Died: February 5
Essayist
Poet
Translator
Writer
Kirkwood
Missouri
Marianne Moore
Marianne Craig Moore
Cynicism
Done
Trying
Always
Things
Life
People
Cynics

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Yule—Yul log for the Christmas-fire tale-spinner—of fairy tales that can come true: Yul Brynner.
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All are / naked, none is safe.
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Life is energy, and energy is creativity. And even when individuals pass on, the energy is retained in the work of art, locked in it and awaiting release if only someone will take the time and the care to unlock it.
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Psychology, which explains everything, Explains nothing, And we are still in doubt.
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I wonder what Adam and Eve think of it by this time.
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Poetry, that is to say the poetic, is a primal necessity.
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When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.
Marianne Moore
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[The] whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the star on the steeple it is a privilege to see so much confusion.
Marianne Moore
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Poetry is a peerless proficiency of the imagination.
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I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.
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Which of us has not been stunned by the beauty of an animal's skin or its flexibility in motion?
Marianne Moore
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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.
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Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.
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Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.
Marianne Moore
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Concurring hands divide flax for damask that when bleached by Irish weather has the silvered chamois-leather water-tightness of a skin.
Marianne Moore
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Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.
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Men are monopolists of stars, garters, buttons and other shining baubles- unfit to be the guardians of another person's happiness.
Marianne Moore
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They fought the enemy, we fight fat living and self-pity. Shine, o shine, unfalsifying sun, on this sick scene.
Marianne Moore
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repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
Marianne Moore
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There never was a war that was not inward.
Marianne Moore