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Blessed the geniuses who know / that egomania is not a duty.

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
Geniuses
Blessed
Genius
Duty
Egomania

More quotes by Marianne Moore

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We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained in conformity with earth's and with heaven's logic: Be the devil's tool, resort to black magic, None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.
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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Yule—Yul log for the Christmas-fire tale-spinner—of fairy tales that can come true: Yul Brynner.
Marianne Moore
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When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.
Marianne Moore
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You are not male nor female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man.
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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Poetry ... ... a place for the genuine, Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise
Marianne Moore
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There is no pleasure subtler than the sensation of being a good workman and in work there is the sense of consanguinity-unconscious as a rule but sometimes conscious.
Marianne Moore
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Below the incandescent stars / below the incandescent fruit, / the strange experience of beauty / its existence is too much / it tears one to pieces / and each fresh wave of consciousness / is poison.
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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When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use.
Marianne Moore
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Camels are snobbish and sheep, unintelligent water buffaloes, neurasthenic-- even murderous. Reindeer seem over-serious.
Marianne Moore
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Superior people never make long visits.
Marianne Moore
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Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.
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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What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.
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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Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast each with a splendor which man in all his vileness cannot set aside each with an excellence!
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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The power of the visible is the invisible.
Marianne Moore