Quote

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

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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
Despair
Places
Comfort
Magellan
Risk
Wildest
Dies
Lest
Home
Islands
Find
Anywhere
Like
Familiar

More quotes by Mary Oliver

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...there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver
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I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read.
Mary Oliver
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Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.
Mary Oliver
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You must not ever stop being whimsical.
Mary Oliver
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Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible.
Mary Oliver
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The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.
Mary Oliver
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Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
Mary Oliver
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The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.
Mary Oliver
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And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?
Mary Oliver
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When I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.
Mary Oliver
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And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.
Mary Oliver
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Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Mary Oliver
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Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving
Mary Oliver
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I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.
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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Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.
Mary Oliver
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Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled---to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.
Mary Oliver
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Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Mary Oliver
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To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
Mary Oliver
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A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.
Mary Oliver