Quotes by Mary Oliver

“to live in this worldyou must be ableto do three thingsto love what is mortal;to hold itagainst your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it go”

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.”

“Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzledto cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.”

“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.”

“the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own”

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, dont hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can n...”

“I know many lives worth living.”

“Sometimes I dreamthat everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly,and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and the brightnessand som...”

“Look, the treesare turningtheir own bodiesinto pillarsof light,are giving off the richfragrance of cinnamonand fulfillment,the long tapersof cattailsare bursting and floating away overthe blue shou...”

“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.”

“I wanted the past to go away, I wantedto leave it, like another country; I wantedmy life to close, and openlike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the songwhere it fallsdown over the rocks: an ...”

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force.”

“Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzledto cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.I want to believe I am lookinginto the white fir...”

“Poem (the spirit likes to dress up) The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes,shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morningin the blue branches of t...”

“Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.Let me keep company always with those who say "Look!" and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.”

“And then I feel the sun itselfas it blazes over the hills,like a million flowers on fire --clearly I'm not needed,yet I feel myself turninginto something of inexplicable value.-from The Buddha's La...”

“When When its over, its over, and we dont know any of us, what happens then.So I try not to miss anything.I think, in my whole life, I have never missed The full moonor the slipper of its coming ba...”

“DogfishI wantedThe past to go away, I wantedTo leave it, like another country; I wantedMy life to close, and openLike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song Where it fallsDown over the roc...”

“I went down not long agoto the Mad River, under the willowsI knelt and drank from that crumpled flow, call itwhat madness you will, there's a sicknessworse than the risk of death and that'sforgetti...”

“Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving”