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

More quotes by 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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Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Mary Oliver
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...Sometimes I dream that everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly, and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness- and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.
Mary Oliver
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The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.
Mary Oliver
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Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
Mary Oliver
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... Let us risk the wildest places, Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.
Mary Oliver
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I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.
Mary Oliver
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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
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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
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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
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My work is loving the world.
Mary Oliver
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Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
Mary Oliver
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I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
Mary Oliver
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He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.
Mary Oliver
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maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us--
Mary Oliver
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I GO DOWN TO THE SHORE I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall— what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.
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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I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver
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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
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You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Mary Oliver