Mary Oliver
"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again. 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 placein the family of things."
89 Quotes
"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again. 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 placein the family of things."
Mary Oliver
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
Mary Oliver
"I feel the terror of idleness,like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea."
Mary Oliver
"It is better for the heart to break, than not to break."
Mary Oliver
"Last nightthe rainspoke to meslowly, saying, what joyto come fallingout of the brisk cloud, to be happy againin a new wayon the earth! That’s what it saidas it dropped, smelling of iron, and vanishedlike a dream of the oceaninto the branchesand the grass below. Then it was over. The sky cleared. I was standingunder a tree. The tree was a treewith happy leaves, and I was myself, and there were stars in the skythat were also themselvesat the momentat which momentmy right handwas holding my left handwhich was holding the treewhich was filled with starsand the soft rain –imagine! imagine! the long and wondrous journeysstill to be ours."
Mary Oliver
"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."
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 wonderif 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
"Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morningand spread it over the fieldsand into the faces of the tulipsand the nodding morning glories,and into the windows of, even, themiserable and the crotchety – best preacher that ever was,dear star, that just happensto be where you are in the universeto keep us from ever-darkness,to ease us with warm touching,to hold us in the great hands of light –good morning, good morning, good morning. Watch, now, how I start the dayin happiness, in kindness."
Mary Oliver
"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift."
Mary Oliver
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