175 Quotes by Marianne Moore

Writing is an undertaking for the modest.

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.

Men are monopolists of "stars, garters, buttons and other shining baubles"- unfit to be the guardians of another person's happiness.

Only imagination that towers can reproduce evanescence and render rigidity flexible.

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

Excess is the common substitute for energy.

The sweet air coming into your house on a fine day, from water etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish.

Which of us has not been stunned by the beauty of an animal's skin or its flexibility in motion?

Poetry is all nouns and verbs.