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
Like
Rushing
Frightening
Familiar
Road
Wonderful
Lint
Understand
Clings
Mind
Crossroads
Something
Sticking

More quotes by Mary Oliver

Image
...whoever you are, not matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting - over & over announcing your place in the family of things.
Mary Oliver
Image
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
Mary Oliver
Image
My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast there the blue plums.
Mary Oliver
Image
What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy.
Mary Oliver
Image
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
Mary Oliver
Image
I know many lives worth living.
Mary Oliver
Image
Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
Mary Oliver
Image
Sunrise What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire.
Mary Oliver
Image
What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?
Mary Oliver
Image
I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.
Mary Oliver
Image
There is only one question: / how to love this world.
Mary Oliver
Image
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver
Image
Today I am altogether without ambition. Where did I get such wisdom?
Mary Oliver
Image
It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.
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
... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.
Mary Oliver
Image
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
Mary Oliver
Image
I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read.
Mary Oliver
Image
Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
Mary Oliver
Image
Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
Mary Oliver