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When I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

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
Rose
Unconcerned
Singing
Motionless
Hear
Weeds
Alone
Introvert
Almost
Roses
Sound
Foxes
Running
Weed
Become
Invisible
Dune

More quotes by Mary Oliver

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Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
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My work is loving the world.
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The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.
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Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
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Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving
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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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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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In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.
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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.
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It's not a competition, it's a doorway.
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I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.
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The language of the poem is the language of particulars.
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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.
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Today I am altogether without ambition. Where did I get such wisdom?
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Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
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...Sometimes I dream that everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly, and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness- and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.
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Praying It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
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I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion - that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.
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The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.
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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.
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