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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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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
Dark
Understand
Boxes
Inspirational
Gift
Someone
Gave
Years
Darkness
Love
Took
Life
Loved
Full
More quotes by Mary Oliver
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
When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.
Mary Oliver
All my life I have been restless-- I have felt there is something more wonderful than gloss-- than wholeness-- than staying at home.
Mary Oliver
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
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver
You never know / What opportunity / Is going to travel to you, / Or through you.
Mary Oliver
I know many lives worth living.
Mary Oliver
The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.
Mary Oliver
It's not a competition, it's a doorway.
Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
Mary Oliver
It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.
Mary Oliver
A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.
Mary Oliver
There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?
Mary Oliver
I learned to build bookshelves and brought books to my room, gathering them around me thickly. I read by day and into the night. I thought about perfectibility, and deism, and adjectives, and clouds, and the foxes, I locked my door, from the inside, and leaped from the roof and went to the woods, by day or darkness.
Mary Oliver
...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
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
You may not agree, you may not care, but if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world — and there are plenty — very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes.
Mary Oliver
I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.
Mary Oliver
The sea isn't a place but a fact, and a mystery.
Mary Oliver
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
