MARY OLIVER Quotes

"I simply do not distinguish between work and play." ~Mary Oliver

"I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable and beautiful
and afraid of nothing as though I had wings."
-Mary Oliver

"In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us." ~Mary Oliver

“In which at last I saw what a child must love,
I saw what love might have done had we loved in time.”
~Mary Oliver, ‘The Visitor’

“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.” ~ Mary Oliver

"It is a beautiful thing just to be alive on this fresh morning" ~Mary Oliver

"It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world." ~Mary Oliver

"It is what I was born for- to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world- to instruct myself over and over..." ~Mary Oliver

“Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.” ~Mary Oliver (RIP 2019)

"One can rise early in the morning and have time to write (or, even, to take a walk and then write) before the world's work schedule begins. Also...one can live simply and honorably on just about enough money to keep a chicken alive. And do so cheerfully." ~Mary Oliver

“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. 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 unbearable sound of the roses singing… If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.” ~Mary Oliver

"Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it--indeed the world's need of it--these never pass." ~MARY OLIVER

"Someone I loved gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift." ~Mary Oliver

"Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed." ~Mary Oliver

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? " -Mary Oliver

"The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn something by being nothing." ~Mary Oliver

"The song you heard singing in the leaf when you were a child is singing still." ~Mary Oliver

"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

"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work." ~Mary Oliver

"We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it." ~Mary Oliver

"What is the gift that I should bring to the world?" ~Mary Oliver 

"What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy." ~Mary Oliver

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. When it is over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.” ~Mary Oliver

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -- over and over announcing your place in the family of things." ~Mary Oliver

Verse

"Watch now
How I start the day
In happiness
In kindness." ~Mary Oliver

╔═════ ೋღ☃ღೋ ═════╗

Thank You

╚═════ ೋღ☃ღೋ ═════╝