Mary Oliver: Trending quotes (page 2)

“I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.”

“So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God, one of which was you.”

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

“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.”

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

“Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.”

“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.”

“Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”

“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.”

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”

“You can have the other words — chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace.”

“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.”

“I am a performing artist; I perform admiration.
Come with me, I want my poems to say. And do the same.”

“I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything — other people, trees, clouds.”

“Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue.
But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function —
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought.
Glory to the world, that good teacher.”

“… 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.”

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

“Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”