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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?

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
Chide
Wander
Wherever
Away
Care
Soul
Look
Looks

More quotes by Mary Oliver

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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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My work is loving the world.
Mary Oliver
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And now you'll be telling stories of my coming back and they won't be false, and they won't be true but they'll be real
Mary Oliver
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If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.
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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Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.
Mary Oliver
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Also I wanted to be able to love And we all know how that one goes, don't we? Slowly
Mary Oliver
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Attention is the beginning of devotion.
Mary Oliver
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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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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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We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story.
Mary Oliver
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Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.
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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When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
Mary Oliver
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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.
Mary Oliver
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And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.
Mary Oliver
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Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Mary Oliver
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Sing, if you can sing, and it not still be musical inside yourself.
Mary Oliver
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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.
Mary Oliver
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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.
Mary Oliver