Quote

I don't know lots of things but I know this: next year when spring flows over the starting point I'll think I'm going to drown in the shimmering miles of it.

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
Years
Miles
Things
Starting
Think
Flow
Thinking
Spring
Year
Shimmering
Point
Drown
Next
Flows
Going
Lots

More quotes by Mary Oliver

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There are things you can’t reach. But You can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god. And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier. I look morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around As though with your arms open.
Mary Oliver
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And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.
Mary Oliver
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You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
Mary Oliver
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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.
Mary Oliver
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Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.
Mary Oliver
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You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.
Mary Oliver
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Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
Mary Oliver
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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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Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver
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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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...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.
Mary Oliver
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My work is loving the world.
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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Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?
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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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
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A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.
Mary Oliver
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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
Mary Oliver
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What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?
Mary Oliver
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There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?
Mary Oliver