Quote

... Let us risk the wildest places, Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.

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
Risk
Wildest
Lest
Despair
Places
Comfort

More quotes by 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
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
Image
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?
Mary Oliver
Image
So every day So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you.
Mary Oliver
Image
Today again I am hardly myself. It happens over and over.
Mary Oliver
Image
The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention.
Mary Oliver
Image
All my life I have been restless-- I have felt there is something more wonderful than gloss-- than wholeness-- than staying at home.
Mary Oliver
Image
What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?
Mary Oliver
Image
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.
Mary Oliver
Image
I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.
Mary Oliver
Image
Music: what so many sentences aspire to be.
Mary Oliver
Image
Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone.
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
Every word is a messenger. Some have wings some are filled with fire some are filled with death.
Mary Oliver
Image
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
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
As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other.
Mary Oliver
Image
Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
Mary Oliver