Quotes by Mary Oliver

“In your handsThe dog, the donkey, surely they know They are alive.Who would argue otherwise?But now, after years of consideration, I am getting beyond that.What about the sunflowers? What about The...”

“Tom Dancer’s gift of a whitebark pine coneYou never know What opportunity Is going to travel to you, Or through you.Once a friend gave me A small pine cone- One of a few He found in the scatOf a gr...”

“I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.”

“There are things you can’t reach. ButYou can reach out to them, and all day long.The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god.And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier.I look; morni...”

“Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always — these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of ...”

“Oh Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing towards you.”

“You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.”

“I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and as you read you keep feeling it and though it be my story it will be common, though it be s...”

“No, I mean really listen. Here's a story, and you don't have to visit manyhouses to find it. One person is talking,the other one is not really listening.someone can look like they are but they'reac...”

“DAISIESIt is possible, I suppose that sometimewe will learn everythingthere is to learn: what the world is, for example,and what it means. I think this as I am crossingfrom one field to another, in...”

“Listen, whatever you see and love—that’s where you are.”

“I would like people to remember of me, howinexhaustible was her mindfulness.”

“Be prepared. A dog is adorable and noble.A dog is a true and loving friend. A dogis also a hedonist.”

“But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely, and from which we benefit. For wilderness is our first home too, and in ...”

“EVERY DOG’S STORYI have a bed, my very own.It’s just my size.And sometimes I like to sleep alonewith dreams inside my eyes.But sometimes dreams are dark and wild and creepyand I wake and am afraid,...”

“But very little of it can do morethan start you on your way to the real, unimaginablydifficult goal of writing memorably. That work is doneslowly and in solitude, and it is as improbable as carryin...”

“MYSTERIES, YES 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 whi...”

“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...”

“It does no good to bark at the television,I said. I’ve tried it too. So he stopped.”

“The Pond"August of another summer, and once again I am drinking the sunand the lilies again are spread across the water. I know now what they want is to touch each other. I have not been here for m...”