Quote

What misery to be afraid of death. What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.

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
Death
Believe
Wretchedness
Proven
Misery
Afraid

More quotes by 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 love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.
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
With words, I could build a world I could live in. I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation.
Mary Oliver
Image
Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives.
Mary Oliver
Image
Who do you want to be in your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Image
When When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know any of us, what happens then. So I try not to miss anything. I think, in my whole life, I have never missed The full moon or the slipper of its coming back. Or, a kiss. Well, yes, especially a kiss.
Mary Oliver
Image
And I say to my heart: rave on.
Mary Oliver
Image
As long as you're dancing, you can break the rules.
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
I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.
Mary Oliver
Image
There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.
Mary Oliver
Image
And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old-or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.
Mary Oliver
Image
When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
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
It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.
Mary Oliver
Image
It's morning, and again I am that lucky person who is in it.
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
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 know many lives worth living.
Mary Oliver