Quote

And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.

Mary Oliver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mary Oliver
Age: 83 †
Born: 1935
Born: September 10
Died: 2019
Died: January 17
Climate Activist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Maple Heights
Ohio
Mary Jane Oliver
Frightening
Familiar
Road
Wonderful
Lint
Understand
Clings
Mind
Crossroads
Something
Sticking
Like
Rushing

More quotes by Mary Oliver

Image
And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.
Mary Oliver
Image
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.
Mary Oliver
Image
So every day So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you.
Mary Oliver
Image
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
Mary Oliver
Image
Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.
Mary Oliver
Image
Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
Mary Oliver
Image
Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dak trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more the prettiness.
Mary Oliver
Image
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine
Mary Oliver
Image
Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious.
Mary Oliver
Image
The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. I don't say this without reckoning in the sorrow, the worry, the many diminishments. But surely it is then that a person's character shines or glooms.
Mary Oliver
Image
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
Mary Oliver
Image
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Mary Oliver
Image
If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.
Mary Oliver
Image
The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.
Mary Oliver
Image
It's not a competition, it's a doorway.
Mary Oliver
Image
When I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.
Mary Oliver
Image
And now you'll be telling stories of my coming back and they won't be false, and they won't be true but they'll be real
Mary Oliver
Image
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
Mary Oliver
Image
I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.
Mary Oliver
Image
I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
Mary Oliver