Best 320 quotes of Mary Oliver on MyQuotes

Mary Oliver

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    Mary Oliver

    A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.

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    Mary Oliver

    A fact: one picks it up and reads it, and puts it down, and there is an end to it. But an idea! That one may pick up, and reflect upon, and oppose, and expand, and so pass a delightful afternoon altogether.

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    Mary Oliver

    After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.

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    Mary Oliver

    All culture developed as some wild, raw creature strived to live better and longer.

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    Mary Oliver

    All my life I have been restless-- I have felt there is something more wonderful than gloss-- than wholeness-- than staying at home.

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    Mary Oliver

    All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing

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    Mary Oliver

    Along with the differences that abide in each of us, there is also in each of us a maverick, the darling stubborn one who won't listen, who insists, who chooses preference or the spirited guess over yardsticks or even history. I suspect this maverick is somewhat what the soul is, or at least that the soul lives close by and companionably with its agitating and inquiring force.

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    Mary Oliver

    Also I wanted to be able to love And we all know how that one goes, don't we? Slowly

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    Mary Oliver

    A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.

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    Mary Oliver

    And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead / children out of the fields into the text / of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better than the grass.

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    Mary Oliver

    And I say to my heart: rave on.

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    Mary Oliver

    And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old-or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.

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    Mary Oliver

    And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.

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    Mary Oliver

    And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold- but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy- and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and Amazons flowing.

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    Mary Oliver

    And now you'll be telling stories of my coming back and they won't be false, and they won't be true but they'll be real

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    Mary Oliver

    And over one more set of hills, along the sea, the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness and are giving it back to the world. If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness.

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    Mary Oliver

    And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?

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    Mary Oliver

    And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.

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    Mary Oliver

    And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

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    Mary Oliver

    And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

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    Mary Oliver

    A poet's interest in craft never fades, of course.

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    Mary Oliver

    Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?

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    Mary Oliver

    Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.

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    Mary Oliver

    As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other.

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    Mary Oliver

    As long as you're dancing, you can break the rules.

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    Mary Oliver

    At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?

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    Mary Oliver

    Attention is the beginning of devotion.

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    Mary Oliver

    Attention without feeling is only a report.

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    Mary Oliver

    Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?

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    Mary Oliver

    Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.

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    Mary Oliver

    Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

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    Mary Oliver

    Belief isn't always easy. But this much I have learned--- if not enough else--- to live with my eyes open.

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    Mary Oliver

    But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?

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    Mary Oliver

    But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.

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    Mary Oliver

    But the owls themselves are not hard to find, silent and on the wing, with their ear tufts flat against their heads as they fly and their huge wings alternately gliding and flapping as they maneuver through the trees. Athena's owl of wisdom and Merlin's companion, Archimedes, were screech owls surely, not this bird with the glassy gaze, restless on the bough, nothing but blood on its mind.

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    Mary Oliver

    Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone.

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    Mary Oliver

    Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.

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    Mary Oliver

    Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life.

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    Mary Oliver

    Do you cherish your humble and silky life?

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    Mary Oliver

    Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

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    Mary Oliver

    Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

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    Mary Oliver

    Drive down any road, take a train or an airplane across the world, leave your old life behind, die and be born again~ wherever you arrive they'll be there first, glossy and rowdy and indistinguishable. The deep muscle of the world.

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    Mary Oliver

    Each body is a lion of courage, something precious of the earth.

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    Mary Oliver

    Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.

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    Mary Oliver

    Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.

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    Mary Oliver

    Everybody has to have their little tooth of power. Everybody wants to be able to bite.

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    Mary Oliver

    Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.

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    Mary Oliver

    Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.

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    Mary Oliver

    Every spring I hear the thrush singing in the glowing woods he is only passing through. His voice is deep, then he lifts it until it seems to fall from the sky. I am thrilled. I am grateful. Then, by the end of morning, he's gone, nothing but silence out of the tree where he rested for a night. And this I find acceptable. Not enough is a poor life. But too much is, well, too much. Imagine Verdi or Mahler every day, all day. It would exhaust anyone.

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    Mary Oliver

    Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation