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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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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
Use
Cabinet
Better
Cabinets
Wells
Fossils
Well
Quotations
Writing
Flies
Thing
Hence
Kind
Collection
Paraphrase
Collections
Amber

More quotes by 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 we think we don't like art it is because it is artificial art.
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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All are / naked, none is safe.
Marianne Moore
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Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting and baseball is like writing. You can never tell with either how it will go.
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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Poetry ... ... a place for the genuine, Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise
Marianne Moore
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Psychology, which explains everything, Explains nothing, And we are still in doubt.
Marianne Moore
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The hands are the heart's messengers.
Marianne Moore
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Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.
Marianne Moore
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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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It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.
Marianne Moore
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What is our innocence, What is our guilt? All are naked, none is safe.
Marianne Moore
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Excess is the common substitute for energy.
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 heart that gives, gathers.
Marianne Moore
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The Irish say your trouble is their trouble and your joy their joy? I wish I could believe it I am troubled, I'm dissatisfied, I'm Irish.
Marianne Moore
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As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.
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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One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express.
Marianne Moore