Saturday Morning Cereal: Marianne Moore

"If something is appropriate, I appropriate it."
Moore quoted by Rotella as transcribed in my lecture notes, Oct. 10, 2007

"his by- / play was more terrible in its effectiveness / than the fiercest frontal attack."
from Moore's "In This Age of Hard Trying, Nonchalance is Good And"

"Reserve is a concomitant of intense feeling."
Moore quoted by Rotella as transcribed in my lecture notes, Oct. 10, 2007

"There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious / fastidiousness."
from Moore's "Critics and Connoisseurs"

"What is / there in being able / to say that one has dominated the stream in an attitude of self-defense; / in proving that one has had the experience / of carrying a stick?"
from Moore's "Critics and Connoisseurs"

Literature is a phase of life. If one is afraid of it, / the situation is irremediable; if one approaches it familiarly, / what one says of it is worthless."
from Moore's "Picking and Choosing"

"To have misapprehended the matter is to have confessed that one has not looked far enough. "
from Moore's "England"

"It comes to this: of whatever sort it is / it must be "lit with piercing glances into the life of things"; / it must acknowledge the spiritual forces which have made it."
from Moore's "When I Buy Pictures"

"it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing"
from Moore's "A Grave"

"But why dissect destiny with instruments / more highly specialized than components of destiny itself?"
from Moore's "Those Various Scalpels"

"The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease. / Distaste which takes no credit to itself is best."
from Moore's "Snakes, Mongooses, Snake-Charmers, and the Like"