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You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.

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
Begin
Listen
Doubt
Fanfare
Talk
Rowing
Young
Embarrassment
Soul
Leap
Everything
Directly
Without
Boat

More quotes by Mary Oliver

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What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?
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I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.
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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
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I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
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Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine
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Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
Mary Oliver
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Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.
Mary Oliver
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Attention without feeling is only a report.
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Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
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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.
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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.
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If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.
Mary Oliver
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Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket you put your life into it and make something out of that.
Mary Oliver
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Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
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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He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.
Mary Oliver
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Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Mary Oliver
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On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?
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Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?
Mary Oliver
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Drive down any road, take a train or an airplane across the world, leave your old life behind, die and be born again~ wherever you arrive they'll be there first, glossy and rowdy and indistinguishable. The deep muscle of the world.
Mary Oliver