Art & Creativity Quote by Thomas Moore

Even the purest message has to pass through grubby hands to reach the world. Moore’s line snaps with that old publishing truth: art may begin in a kind of holiness, but dissemination is a contact sport. “Angel” and “devils” aren’t theology here so much as a moral casting of the literary marketplace. Inspiration is elevated; production is compromised. The verb choice does the work. An angel can “write” in private, untouched by commerce. Printing is industrial, public, irrevocable - and staffed by gatekeepers who may be venal, censorious, sloppy, or simply indifferent to the ideals that birthed the work.

The subtext is less anti-printer than anti-system. Moore, writing in an era when print culture was exploding alongside political repression, knew how quickly a text could be distorted by the machinery around it: publishers chasing profit, editors sanding down edges, legal threats, libel laws, and the informal pressures of taste and patronage. “Must print” is the sting. It’s not that devils sometimes print; they’re structurally required. The marketplace doesn’t merely allow corruption, it recruits it.

There’s also a sly self-awareness. Moore was not a cloistered poet; he moved through salons and institutions and understood reputation as currency. The line reads like a wink from someone who has watched idealism get typeset into compromise. It anticipates modern media cynicism: the best intentions still need distribution, and distribution is where ethics go to haggle.