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Mary Oliver - From the Aging category:
- Messenger...
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Beauty category:
We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Belief category:
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Children category:
Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Competition category:
It's not a competition, it's a doorway. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Earth category:
I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Education category:
In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Fire category:
Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes indeed. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Happiness category:
We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Humility category:
In the glare of your mind, be modest. And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Imagination category:
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Imagination category:
Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Importance category:
It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking... wait until morning - it'll be gone. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Indolence category:
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. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Innocence category:
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. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Invention category:
Invention hovers always a little above the rules. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Journey category:
And now I understand something so frightening and wonderful - how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Joy category:
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Joy category:
Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Knowledge category:
I believe I will never quite know. Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Language category:
The language of the poem is the language of particulars. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Language category:
Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Life category:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Loneliness category:
...whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Loneliness category:
When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider the orderliness of the world. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Mistakes category:
You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need anymore of that sound. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Mysteries category:
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Nature category:
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Nature category:
It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Observation category:
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Opportunity category:
You never know / What opportunity / Is going to travel to you, / Or through you. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Pets category:
A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Pets category:
A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing... (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Poetry category:
Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Possessions category:
I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Prayer category:
Prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Prayer category:
So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Questions category:
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?' (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Questions category:
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. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Renewal category:
You, too, can be carved anew by the details of your devotion. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Revelation category:
If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Rules category:
As long as you're dancing, you can / Break the rules. / Sometimes breaking the rules is just / Extending the rules. / Sometimes there are no rules. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Solitude category:
I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Time category:
A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Windows category:
For how many years have you gone through the house shutting the windows, while the rain was still five miles away and veering, o plum-colored clouds, to the north away from you and you did not even know enough
to be sorry... and will you find yourself finally wanting to forget all enclosures, including the enclosure of yourself, o lonely leaf, and will you dash finally, frantically,
to the windows and haul them open and lean out to the dark, silvered sky, to everything that is beyond capture, shouting
I'm here, I'm here! now, now, now, now, now. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Wonder category:
-Messenger
Let me / Keep my mind on what matters / Which is my work, / Which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished... (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Wonder category:
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. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Words category:
To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Work category:
-Messenger
My work is loving the world. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Work category:
I simply do not distinguish between work and play. (Mary Oliver)
Mary Oliver - From the Writing category:
I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life. (Mary Oliver)
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