Mary Oliver Quotes

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

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

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

~ Mary Oliver

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

~ Mary Oliver

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 wasalive for a little while.

~ 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

I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple -- or a green field -- a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing -- an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness --wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak --to be company. It was everything that was needed, when everything was needed.

~ Mary Oliver

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

~ Mary Oliver

Percy wakes me (fourteen)Percy wakes me and I am not ready.He has slept all night under the covers.Now he’s eager for action: a walk, then breakfast.So I hasten up. He is sitting on the kitchen counter Where he is not supposed to be. How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you Needed me, To wake me. He thought he would a lecture and deeply His eyes begin to shine.He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.He squirms and squeals: he has done something That he needed And now he hears that it is okay. I scratch his ears. I turn him over And touch him everywhere. He isWild with the okayness of it. Then we walk, then He has breakfast, and he is happy.This is a poem about Percy.This is a poem about more than Percy.Think about it.

~ Mary Oliver

oxygen Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even, while it calls the earth its home, the soul. So the merciful, noisy machine stands in our house working away in its lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel before the fire, stirring with a stick of iron, letting the logs lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room, are in your usual position, leaning on your right shoulder which aches all day. You are breathing patiently; it is a beautiful sound. It is your life, which is so close to my own that I would not know where to drop the knife of separation. And what does this have to do with love, except everything? Now the fire rises and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red roses of flame. Then it settles to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift: our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

~ 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.

~ Mary Oliver

to live in this worldyou must be ableto do three thingsto love what is mortal;to hold itagainst your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it go

~ Mary Oliver

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

~ Mary Oliver

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.

~ Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don't Hesitate)

~ Mary Oliver

I know many lives worth living.

~ Mary Oliver

Look, the treesare turningtheir own bodiesinto pillarsof light,are giving off the richfragrance of cinnamonand fulfillment,the long tapersof cattailsare bursting and floating away overthe blue shouldersof the ponds,and every pond,no matter what itsname is, isnameless now.Every yeareverythingI have ever learnedin my lifetimeleads back to this: the firesand the black river of losswhose other sideis salvation,whose meaningnone of us will ever know.To live in this worldyou must be ableto do three things:to love what is mortal;to hold itagainst your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it go.

~ Mary Oliver

So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing,and put your lips to the world.And live your life.

~ Mary Oliver

I wanted the past to go away, I wantedto leave it, like another country; I wantedmy life to close, and openlike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the songwhere it fallsdown over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;I wantedto hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,whoever I was, I wasalivefor a little while.

~ Mary Oliver

Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.I want to believe I am lookinginto the white fire of a great mystery.I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—that the light is everything—that it is more than the sumof each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.

~ Mary Oliver

Poem (the spirit likes to dress up) The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes,shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morningin the blue branches of the world. It could float, of course, but would ratherplumb rough matter. Airy and shapeless thing, it needs the metaphor of the body,lime and appetite, the oceanic fluids; it needs the body’s world, instinctand imagination and the dark hug of time, sweetness and tangibility,to be understood, to be more than pure light that burns where no one is –so it enters us – in the morning shines from brute comfort like a stitch of lightning;and at night lights up the deep and wondrous drownings of the body like a star.

~ Mary Oliver

Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.Let me keep company always with those who say Look! and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

~ Mary Oliver

And then I feel the sun itselfas it blazes over the hills,like a million flowers on fire --clearly I'm not needed,yet I feel myself turninginto something of inexplicable value.-from The Buddha's Last Instruction

~ Mary Oliver

When When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know any of us, what happens then.So I try not to miss anything.I think, in my whole life, I have never missed The full moonor the slipper of its coming back.Or, a kiss.Well, yes, especially a kiss.

~ Mary Oliver

DogfishI wantedThe past to go away, I wantedTo leave it, like another country; I wantedMy life to close, and openLike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song Where it fallsDown 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 wasAliveFor a little while.…mostly, I want to be kind.And nobody, of course, is kind,Or mean,For a simple reason.And nobody gets out of it, having to Swim through the fires to stay inThis world.

~ Mary Oliver

I went down not long agoto the Mad River, under the willowsI knelt and drank from that crumpled flow, call itwhat madness you will, there's a sicknessworse than the risk of death and that'sforgetting what we should never forget.Tecumseh lived here.The wounds of the pastare ignored, but hang onlike the litter that snags among the yellow branches,newspapers and plastic bags, after the rains.Where are the Shawnee now?Do you know? Or would you have to write to Washington, and even then,whatever they said,would you believe it? SometimesI would like to paint my body red and go intothe glittering snowto die.His name meant Shooting Star.From Mad River country north to the borderhe gathered the tribesand armed them one more time. He vowedto keep Ohio and it took himover twenty years to fail.After the bloody and final fighting, at Thames,it was over, excepthis body could not be found,and you can do whatever you want with that, sayhis people came in the black leaves of the nightand hauled him to a secret grave, or thathe turned into a little boy again, and leapedinto a birch canoe and wentrowing home down the rivers. Anywaythis much I'm sure of: if we meet him, we'll know it,he will still beso angry.

~ Mary Oliver

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

~ Mary Oliver

The poet dreams of the mountainSometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, takingThe rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleepingUnder the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.I want to see how many stars are still in the skyThat we have smothered for years now, a century at least.I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.

~ Mary Oliver

The sweetness of dogs (fifteen) What do you say, Percy? I am thinkingof sitting out on the sand to watchthe moon rise. Full tonight.So we goand the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me shudder, makes me think abouttime and space, makes me takemeasure of myself: one iotapondering heaven. Thus we sit,I thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s perfect beauty and also, oh! How richit is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile, leans against me and gazes up intomy face. As though I werehis perfect moon.

~ Mary Oliver

On the beach, at dawn:Four small stones clearlyHugging each other.How many kinds of loveMight there be in the world,And how many formations might they makeAnd who am I everTo imagine I could knowSuch a marvelous business?When the sun brokeIt poured willingly its lightOver the stonesThat did not move, not at all,Just as, to its always generous term,It shed its light on me,My own body that loves, Equally, to hug another body.

~ Mary Oliver

In your handsThe dog, the donkey, surely they know They are alive.Who would argue otherwise?But now, after years of consideration, I am getting beyond that.What about the sunflowers? What about The tulips, and the pines?Listen, all you have to do is start and There’ll be no stopping.What about mountains? What about water Slipping over rocks?And speaking of stones, what about The little ones you can Hold in your hands, their heartbeats So secret, so hidden it may take yearsBefore, finally, you hear them?

~ Mary Oliver

How heron comesIt is a negligence of the mindnot to notice how at duskheron comes to the pond andstands there in his death robes, perfectservant of the system, hungry, his eyesfull of attention, his wingspure light

~ Mary Oliver

Tom Dancer’s gift of a whitebark pine coneYou never know What opportunity Is going to travel to you, Or through you.Once a friend gave me A small pine cone- One of a few He found in the scatOf a grizzly In Utah maybe, Or Wyoming. I took it homeAnd did what I supposed He was sure I would do- I ate it, ThinkingHow it had traveled Through that rough And holy body. It was crisp and sweet.It was almost a prayer Without words. My gratitude, Tom Dancer, For this gift of the world I adore so much And want to belong to. And thank you too, great bear

~ Mary Oliver

I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.

~ Mary Oliver

How perfect to be aboard a ship withmaybe a hundred years still in my pocket.But it's late, for all of us,and in truth the only ship there isis the ship we are all onburning the world as we go.

~ Mary Oliver

There are things you can’t reach. ButYou 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 aroundAs though with your arms open.

~ Mary Oliver

Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always — these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit. Nor can the actual work be well separated from the entire life. Like the knights of the Middle Ages, there is little the creatively inclined person can do but to prepare himself, body and spirit, for the labor to come — for his adventures are all unknown. In truth, the work itself is the adventure. And no artist could go about this work, or would want to, with less than extraordinary energy and concentration. The extraordinary is what art is about.

~ Mary Oliver

Every springI hear the thrush singingin the glowing woodshe is only passing through.His voice is deep,then he lifts it until it seemsto fall from the sky.I am thrilled.I am grateful.Then, by the end of morning,he's gone, nothing but silenceout of the treewhere he rested for a night.And this I find acceptable.Not enough is a poor life.But too much is, well, too much.Imagine Verdi or Mahlerevery day, all day.It would exhaust anyone.

~ Mary Oliver

I stood like Adam in his lonely gardenOn that first morning, shaken out of sleep,Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.

~ Mary Oliver

I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.

~ Mary Oliver