Quote

I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.

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
Else
Wanted
Nothing
Writing
Always
Poems
Write

More quotes by Mary Oliver

Image
Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.
Mary Oliver
Image
It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.
Mary Oliver
Image
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
Mary Oliver
Image
But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.
Mary Oliver
Image
There is only one question: / how to love this world.
Mary Oliver
Image
The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward it can give gifts or withhold all it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
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
Image
And over one more set of hills, along the sea, the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness and are giving it back to the world. If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness.
Mary Oliver
Image
It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.
Mary Oliver
Image
Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.
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
Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life.
Mary Oliver
Image
And I say to my heart: rave on.
Mary Oliver
Image
When When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know any of us, what happens then. So I try not to miss anything. I think, in my whole life, I have never missed The full moon or the slipper of its coming back. Or, a kiss. Well, yes, especially a kiss.
Mary Oliver
Image
I was hurrying through my own soul . . . I was leaning out . . . I was listening.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.
Mary Oliver