Quote

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

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
Sweetness
Blue
Sunflowers
Equal
Hummingbird
Work
Quickening
World
Yeast
Sunflower
Plums
Seekers

More quotes by Mary Oliver

Image
It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone.
Mary Oliver
Image
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Mary Oliver
Image
I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet I just get up and write.
Mary Oliver
Image
I was hurrying through my own soul . . . I was leaning out . . . I was listening.
Mary Oliver
Image
I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.
Mary Oliver
Image
...there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save.
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
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
Mary Oliver
Image
Also I wanted to be able to love And we all know how that one goes, don't we? Slowly
Mary Oliver
Image
You never know / What opportunity / Is going to travel to you, / Or through you.
Mary Oliver
Image
I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.
Mary Oliver
Image
A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
Mary Oliver
Image
The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, frog voice now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever from, One or Two Things
Mary Oliver
Image
Today I am altogether without ambition. Where did I get such wisdom?
Mary Oliver
Image
Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Mary Oliver
Image
Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?
Mary Oliver
Image
Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
Mary Oliver
Image
Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.
Mary Oliver
Image
How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of attention, his wings pure light
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