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

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

More quotes by Mary Oliver

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People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.
Mary Oliver
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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
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I know death is the fascinating snake under the leaves, sliding and sliding I know the heart loves him too, can't turn away, can't break the spell. Everything wants to enter the slow thickness, aches to be peaceful finally and at any cost. Wants to be stone.
Mary Oliver
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Poetry is a river many voices travel in it poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless each arrives in an historical context almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it--indeed the world's need of it--these never pass.
Mary Oliver
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My work is loving the world.
Mary Oliver
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I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.
Mary Oliver
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You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
Mary Oliver
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I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver
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Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
Mary Oliver
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I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere I finally just stop and write.
Mary Oliver
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Poetry is a serious business literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.
Mary Oliver
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At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?
Mary Oliver
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Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
Mary Oliver
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Sing, if you can sing, and it not still be musical inside yourself.
Mary Oliver
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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
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There are things you can’t reach. But You 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 morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around As though with your arms open.
Mary Oliver
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Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
Mary Oliver
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I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
Mary Oliver
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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
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...Sometimes I dream that 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 brightness- and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.
Mary Oliver