Quote

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Mary Oliver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Look
Looks
Chide
Wander
Wherever
Away
Care
Soul

More quotes by Mary Oliver

Image
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
Image
This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention.
Mary Oliver
Image
There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they are in another world altogether.
Mary Oliver
Image
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.
Mary Oliver
Image
The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.
Mary Oliver
Image
Today I am altogether without ambition. Where did I get such wisdom?
Mary Oliver
Image
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver
Image
We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them ... A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing. . .
Mary Oliver
Image
I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
Mary Oliver
Image
All eternity is in the moment.
Mary Oliver
Image
You must not ever stop being whimsical.
Mary Oliver
Image
Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver
Image
Every word is a messenger. Some have wings some are filled with fire some are filled with death.
Mary Oliver
Image
A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.
Mary Oliver
Image
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.
Mary Oliver
Image
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Image
... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.
Mary Oliver
Image
I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet I just get up and write.
Mary Oliver