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

— Mary Oliver

"Staying Alive"
Blue Pastures (1995)
Context: I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything — other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion — that standing within this otherness — the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books — can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.

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Mary Oliver 98

American writer 1935–2019

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

El árbol está solo, la nube está sola. Todo está solo cuando yo estoy solo.
Voces (1943)

“Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos — the trees, the clouds, everything.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living

“… along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world.”

David Abram (1957) American philosopher, ecologist

Source: The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

“I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Esse" (1954), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Pinsky
Uncollected Poems (1954-1969)

“How small life is here
and how big nothingness.
The sky, tired of light,
has given everything to the snow.

The two trees bow
their heads to each other.
Clouds cross the world’s
silence in a circle dance”

Robert Walser (1878–1956) Swiss writer

Source: Oppressive Light: Selected Poems by Robert Walser

“...I can savor a work, but it is difficult for me to judge it independently from the author, and I would gladly say, as is the tree, so is the fruit.”

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic

Original: (fr) ...je puis goûter une œuvre, mais il m'est difficile de la juger indépendamment de la connaissance de l'homme même, et je dirais volontiers: tel arbre, tel fruit.

“I swear, there is in me no wizardry of word.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Przysięgam, nie ma we mnie czarodziejstwa słów.
Mówię do ciebie milcząc, jak obłok czy drzewo.
"Dedication" (1945); quoted in Conversant Essays : Contemporary Poets on Poetry (1990) edited by James McCorkle, p. 69

“We stood there, looking at each other, saying nothing. But it was the kind of nothing that meant everything.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

“I went to an audition the other day, they were casting 13 people to be clouds. 14 people showed up, it was overcast.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

“Am I not among the early risers
and the long-distance walkers? Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider
the perfection of the morning star
above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees
blue in the first light?
Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though
sheets of water flowed over them
though it is only wind, that common thing,
free to everyone, and everything?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Am I Not Among the Early Risers"
West Wind (1997)

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

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