Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Children
Substance
World
Material
Materials
Realizing
Alive
Child
Captivated
Reading
Nevertheless
Without
Poems
More quotes by Mary Oliver
The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.
Mary Oliver
A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
Mary Oliver
I GO DOWN TO THE SHORE I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall— what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.
Mary Oliver
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.
Mary Oliver
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Mary Oliver
I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.
Mary Oliver
We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.
Mary Oliver
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
In the glare of your mind, be modest. And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.
Mary Oliver
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Mary Oliver
I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable and beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings.
Mary Oliver
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
Mary Oliver
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
Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?
Mary Oliver
My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast there the blue plums.
Mary Oliver
He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.
Mary Oliver
The sea isn't a place but a fact, and a mystery.
Mary Oliver
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.
Mary Oliver
We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story.
Mary Oliver
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.
Mary Oliver
