Quotes from Mary Oliver

Well, who knows. Who knows what hung, fluttering, at the window between him and the darkness. Anyway, Blake the hosier's son stood up and turned away from the sooty sill and the dark city— turned away forever from the factories, the personal strivings, to a life of the imagination.

All things are meltable, and replaceable. Not at this moment, but soon enough, we are lambs and we are leaves, and we are stars and the shining mysterious pond water itself... May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream.

I simply was not able to risk wrecking her world, and I could see no possible way I could move the whole kingdom. So I left her with the only thing I could—the certainty of a little more time.

Listen, whatever you see and love- that's where you are.

The whole business of what's reality and what isn't has never been solved and probably never will be. So I don't care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty.

if you live simply and with a lyrical heart in the cumbered neighborhoods or even, as Mozart sometimes managed to, in a palace, offering tune after tune after tune, making some hard-hearted prince prudent and kind, just by being happy

Fear defeated me. And yet, not in faith and not in madness but with the courage I thought my dream deserved, I stepped outside.

I guess she was so busy with her own happiness she had grown careless and was just wandering along listening to the wind as she leaned down to lip the sweetness.

What is my name, o what is my name that I may offer it back to the beautiful world? Have I walked long enough where the sea breaks raspingly all day and all night upon the pale sand?

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors to my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.

What shall I do? When I pick up the broom he leaves the room. When I fuss with kindling he runs for the yard. Then he's back, and we hug for a long time. In his low-to-the-ground chest I can hear his heart slowing down. Then I rub his shoulders and kiss his feet and fondle his long hound ears. Benny, I say, don't worry. I also know the way the old life haunts the new.

Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with the fragrance of the fields and the freshness of the oceans which you have made, and help me to hear and to hold in all dearness those exacting and wonderful words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying: Follow me.

the sunflowers themselves far more wonderful than any words about them.

As for lovers, they are discovering New ways to love. Listen, their windows are open. You can hear them laughing.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said to the wild roses: deny me not, but suffer my devotion. Then, all afternoon, I sat among them.

Song of the Builders On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God— a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside this way and that way. How great was its energy, how humble its effort. Let us hope it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe.

Finally, the slick mountains of love break over us.

So maybe it was the right way after all. If this was lost, let us all be lost always.

It's more than bones. It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse. It's more than the beating of the single heart. It's praising. It's giving until the giving feels like receiving. You have a life - just imagine that! You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another.

Impossible to believe we need so much as the world wants us to buy. I have more clothes, lamps, dishes, paper clips than I could possibly use before I die. Oh, I would like to live in an empty house, with vines for walls, and a carpet of grass. No planks, no plastic, no fiberglass. And I suppose sometime I will. Old and cold I will lie apart from all this buying and selling, with only the beautiful earth in my heart.

and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.

How does any of us live in this world? One thing compensates for another, I suppose. Sometimes what's wrong does not hurt at all, but rather shines like a new moon.

Until I came and saw the water falling, its lace legs and its womanly arms sheeting down, while something howled like thunder, over the rocks, all day and all night - unspooling.