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Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine

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
Mines
Mine
Tell
Despair

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If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.
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Today I am altogether without ambition. Where did I get such wisdom?
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You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
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It's morning, and again I am that lucky person who is in it.
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I was hurrying through my own soul . . . I was leaning out . . . I was listening.
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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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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 feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea.
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.
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Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
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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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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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Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
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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.
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So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
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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.
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Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
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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.
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The sea isn't a place but a fact, and a mystery.
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What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy.
Mary Oliver