Mary Oliver citations

Page 3

“For some things there are no wrong seasons. Which is what I dream of for me.”

“A dog can never tell you what she knows from the
smells of the world, but you know, watching her,
that you know
almost nothing.”

“I feel the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst.
Death isn't just an idea.”

“Sunrise

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.”

“When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.”

“Drive down any road,

take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your old life behind,

die and be born again~
wherever you arrive
they'll be there first,

glossy and rowdy
and indistinguishable.
The deep muscle of the world.”

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force.”

“Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.”

“We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.”

“I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really call being alive.”

“THREE THINGS TO REMEMBER As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules. Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules. Sometimes there are no rules.”

“We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much.”

“Far off in the red mangroves an alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass and lies there, studying his poems.”

“The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things,
I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever

from, One or Two Things”

“There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier?”

“Things take the time they take.
Don't worry.
How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?”

“Always there is something worth saying
about glory, about gratitude.”

“Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.”

“It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.”

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes indeed.”

“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.”

“Be prepared. A dog is adorable and noble.
A dog is a true and loving friend. A dog
is also a hedonist.”

“I have a little dog who likes to nap with me.
He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck.
He is sweeter than soap.
He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace,
which can't even bark…”

“After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.”

“The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.”

“And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead / children out of the fields into the text / of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better than the grass.”

“Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you

for everything.”

“Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving”

“Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.”