Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Places
Comfort
Magellan
Risk
Wildest
Dies
Lest
Home
Islands
Find
Anywhere
Like
Familiar
Despair
More quotes by Mary Oliver
There is only one question: / how to love this world.
Mary Oliver
We can know a lot. And still, no doubt, there are rash and wonderful ideas brewing somewhere there are many surprises yet to come.
Mary Oliver
All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing
Mary Oliver
People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.
Mary Oliver
So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.
Mary Oliver
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
... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.
Mary Oliver
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
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver
After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.
Mary Oliver
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
...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
Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver
The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.
Mary Oliver
Everybody has to have their little tooth of power. Everybody wants to be able to bite.
Mary Oliver
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
I know many lives worth living.
Mary Oliver
I don't know lots of things but I know this: next year when spring flows over the starting point I'll think I'm going to drown in the shimmering miles of it.
Mary Oliver
I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.
Mary Oliver
It's not a competition, it's a doorway.
Mary Oliver
