Mary Oliver Quotes

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.

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.

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?

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. — from WHEN DEATH COMES

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

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.

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.

The world has need of dreamers as well as shoemakers.

I don't want to end up simply having visited the world.

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

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

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

I did think, let's go about this slowly.
This is important. This should take some really deep thought. We should take small thoughtful steps.
But, bless us, we didn't.

You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul. That worrier.

There are things you can’t reach. But
You can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god.

And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
As though with your arms open.