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Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity.

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
Subversive
Egotism
Ego
Usually
Sagacity

More quotes by Marianne Moore

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Superior people never make long visits.
Marianne Moore
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[On her use of quotations:] When a thing has been said so well that it could not be said better, why paraphrase it? Hence my writing, is, if not a cabinet of fossils, a kind of collection of flies in amber.
Marianne Moore
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the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bell buoys, advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which dropped things are bound to sink-- in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor consciousness.
Marianne Moore
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If you will tell me why the fen appears impassable, I then will tell you why I think that I can cross it if I try.
Marianne Moore
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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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[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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I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.
Marianne Moore
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Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps adjusting the ash heaps opening and shutting itself like an injured fan.
Marianne Moore
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Psychology, which explains everything, Explains nothing, And we are still in doubt.
Marianne Moore
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Yule—Yul log for the Christmas-fire tale-spinner—of fairy tales that can come true: Yul Brynner.
Marianne Moore
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Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.
Marianne Moore
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A man is a writer if all his words are strung in definite sentence sounds.
Marianne Moore
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In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity.
Marianne Moore
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Honesty - however dangerous - should be as valuable as radium it seems to me.
Marianne Moore
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You're not free until you've been made captive by supreme belief.
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.
Marianne Moore
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Maine should be pleased that its animal is not a waverer, and rather than fight, lets the primed quill fall. Shallow oppressor, intruder, insister, you have found a resister.
Marianne Moore
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The weak overcomes its/ menace, the strong over-/comes itself.
Marianne Moore
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The enslaver is enslaved, the hater, harmed.
Marianne Moore
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What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.
Marianne Moore