Quotes by Mary Oliver

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

“I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple -- or a green field -- a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing -- an artifact, a moment of seeml...”

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

“Every springI hear the thrush singingin the glowing woodshe is only passing through.His voice is deep,then he lifts it until it seemsto fall from the sky.I am thrilled.I am grateful.Then, by the en...”

“I stood like Adam in his lonely gardenOn that first morning, shaken out of sleep,Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.”

“I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.”

“You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

“Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face.Hello, you who made the morningand spread it over the fieldsand into the faces of the tulipsand the nodding morning glories,and into the windows of, even, the...”

“Wild GeeseYou do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell...”

“Percy wakes me (fourteen)Percy wakes me and I am not ready.He has slept all night under the covers.Now hes eager for action: a walk, then breakfast.So I hasten up. He is sitting on the kitchen coun...”

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”

“When it's over, I want to say: all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don't want to wonderif I have made of my life so...”

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

“I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks...”

“Last nightthe rainspoke to meslowly, saying, what joyto come fallingout of the brisk cloud, to be happy againin a new wayon the earth! Thats what it saidas it dropped, smelling of iron, and vanishe...”

“It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.”

“I feel the terror of idleness,like a red thirst.Death isn't just an idea.”

“oxygen Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even, while it calls the earth its home, the soul. So the merciful, noisy machine stands in our house working away in its lung-like voice. I hear it a...”

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

“You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about ...”