Mary Oliver Quotes

You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.

to leap into it and hold on, connecting everything,

I am burdened with anxiety. Anxiety for the lamb with his bitter future, anxiety for my own body, and, not least, anxiety for my own soul. You can fool a lot of yourself but you can’t fool the soul. That worrier.

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.

"Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still
and learning to be astonished.

(from "The Messenger")"

It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.

PRAYING It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.

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

"What is your heart doing now? "Remembering. Remembering!

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 death comes….
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what it’s going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

No, I'd never been to this country
before. No, I didn't know where the roads
would lead me. No, I didn't intend to
turn back.

Foolishness? No, It’s Not

Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. To do this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a little book. So I suppose, from their point of view, it’s reasonable that my friends say: what foolishness! She’s got her head in the clouds again.

But it’s not. Of course I have to give up, but by then I’m half crazy with the wonder of it — the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.

how could there be a day in your whole life that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?

لا أريد أن أتساءل في حيرة
هل صنعت شيئا من حياتي،
لا..
لا أريد..
أن أتحسر أو أخاف،
أو أن أغوص في جدال.
أنا فقط أريد..
ألا ينتهي بي المطاف..
كعابرة سبيل... في هذه الحياة.