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When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.

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
Soft
Pity
Walks
Littles
Little
Thing
Every
World
Included

More quotes by 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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Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.
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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Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled---to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.
Mary Oliver
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I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really call being alive.
Mary Oliver
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What misery to be afraid of death. What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.
Mary Oliver
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Like Magellan, let us find our islands To die in, far from home, from anywhere Familiar. Let us risk the wildest places, Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.
Mary Oliver
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Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Mary Oliver
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The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward it can give gifts or withhold all it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.
Mary Oliver
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Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible.
Mary Oliver
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It's morning, and again I am that lucky person who is in it.
Mary Oliver
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I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.
Mary Oliver
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Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.
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
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The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.
Mary Oliver
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All eternity is in the moment.
Mary Oliver
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Love, love, love, says Percy. And hurry as fast as you can along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust. Then, go to sleep. Give up your body heat, your beating heart. Then, trust.
Mary Oliver
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So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.
Mary Oliver
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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.
Mary Oliver
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As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other.
Mary Oliver