Mary Oliver quotes - page 2

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. (Mary Oliver)
I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really call being alive. View quote
Mary Oliver
Things take the time they take. Don't worry. How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine? View quote
Mary Oliver
I don't know what God is. I don't know what death is. But I believe they have between them some fervent and necessary arrangement. View quote
Mary Oliver
then you too are a dream which last night and the night before that and the years before that you were not. View quote
Mary Oliver
What countries, what visitations, what pomp would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain? View quote
Mary Oliver
I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing. View quote
Mary Oliver
When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. View quote
Mary Oliver
So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray. View quote
Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields... Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness. View quote
Mary Oliver
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. (Mary Oliver)
I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall- what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do. View quote
Mary Oliver
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life. View quote
Mary Oliver
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed. View quote
Mary Oliver
Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function - to excite the viewers toward sublime thought. Glory to the world, that good teacher. View quote
Mary Oliver
... there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save. View quote
Mary Oliver
Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life? View quote
Mary Oliver
Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness. View quote
Mary Oliver
The man who has many answers is often found in the theaters of information where he offers, graciously, his deep findings. While the man who has only questions, to comfort himself, makes music. View quote
Mary Oliver
So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life. View quote
Mary Oliver
He is exactly the poem I wanted to write. (Mary Oliver)
I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too. View quote
Mary Oliver
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world. View quote
Mary Oliver
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world. View quote
Mary Oliver
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem) Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift. View quote
Mary Oliver