Thomas Moore Quotes

“The key to seeing the world's soul, and in the process wakening our own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination is illusion.”
― Thomas Moore, Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality

“Any writer who puts his words and thoughts out into the public is going to be criticized.”
― Thomas Moore

“According to the normal view, happiness is the summum bonum towards which we're naturally impelled by virtue - which in their definition means following one's natural impulses, as God meant us to do. But this includes obeying the instinct to be reasonable in our likes and dislikes. And reason also teaches us, first to love and reverence Almighty God, to Whom we owe our existence and our potential happiness, and secondly to get through life as comfortably and cheerfully as we can , and help all other members of our species to do so too.”
― Thomas Moore

“Music, oh, how faint, how weak,
Language fades before thy spell!
Why should Feeling ever speak,
When thou canst breathe her soul so well?”
― Thomas Moore

“In his room, scanning through the poetry book for one to read in class, Tate found a poem by Thomas Moore:


... she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.


And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of death is near.


The words made him think of Kya, Jodie's little sister. She'd seemed so small and alone in the marsh's big sweep. He imagined his own sister lost out there. His dad was right- poems made you feel something.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“As long as we refuse to accept that our pride is the source of our unrest, we will continue to wither on the vine. "Humility, that low, sweet root / From which all heavenly virtues shoot." —Thomas Moore”
― Hannah Anderson, Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul