"Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents."
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Quote collection
Mary Oliver quotes (page 6 of 14)
280 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Each body is a lion of courage, something precious of the earth."
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"I have a little dog who likes to nap with me. He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck. He is sweeter than soap. He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace, which can't even bark."
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"And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?"
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"Of course! The path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it."
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"I simply do not distinguish between work and play."
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"Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death."
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"You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound."
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"Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world."
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"Come with me into the woods where spring is advancing, as it does, no matter what, not being singular or particular, but one of the forever gifts, and certainly visible."
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"I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars."
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"You, too, can be carved anew by the details of your devotion."
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"There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they are in another world altogether."
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"A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing."
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"Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light."
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"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."
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"If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much."
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"The sea isn't a place but a fact, and a mystery."
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"I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things."
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"Drive down any road, take a train or an airplane across the world, leave your old life behind, die and be born again~ wherever you arrive they'll be there first, glossy and rowdy and indistinguishable. The deep muscle of the world."
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