Mary Oliver

Poet

Mary Oliver was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet known for her evocative nature poetry that explores themes of life, beauty, and human connection.

Born
December 10, 1935
Died
April 9, 2019
Quotes
280
Rank
#520

Quote collection

Mary Oliver quotes (page 4 of 14)

280 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Mary Oliver Poet
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"How many mysteries have you seen in your lifetime? How many nets pulled full over the boat's side, each silver body ready or not falling into submission? How many roses in early summer uncurling above the pale sands then falling back in unfathomable willingness? And what can you say? Glory to the rose and the leaf, to the seed, to the silver fish. Glory to time and the wild fields, and to joy. And to grief's shock and torpor, its near swoon."

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Mary Oliver Poet
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"Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious."

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Mary Oliver Poet
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"And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar."

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"Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life."

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Mary Oliver Poet
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"I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. We don't have to rely totally on experience if we can do things in our imagination.... It's the only way in which you can live more lives than your own. You can escape your own time, your own sensibility, your own narrowness of vision."

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Mary Oliver Poet
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"But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive."

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"The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. I don't say this without reckoning in the sorrow, the worry, the many diminishments. But surely it is then that a person's character shines or glooms."

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

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Mary Oliver Poet
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"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."

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Mary Oliver Poet
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"But the owls themselves are not hard to find, silent and on the wing, with their ear tufts flat against their heads as they fly and their huge wings alternately gliding and flapping as they maneuver through the trees. Athena's owl of wisdom and Merlin's companion, Archimedes, were screech owls surely, not this bird with the glassy gaze, restless on the bough, nothing but blood on its mind."

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

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"There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay."

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"Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude."

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Mary Oliver Poet
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"I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage."

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