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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

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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
Care
Dogs
May
Lists
Book
Holding
Without
Near
Love
Plenty
World
Dog
Leashes
Agree
Sights
Sight
List

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I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
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... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.
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It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.
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Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
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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.
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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.
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He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.
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And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
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Every word is a messenger. Some have wings some are filled with fire some are filled with death.
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Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.
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My work is loving the world.
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We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story.
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And I say to my heart: rave on.
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Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
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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.
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I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
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.
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A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them ... A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing. . .
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Attention without feeling is only a report.
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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