Poetry is a serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
...whoever you are, not matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? When it's over, I want to… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
from the complications of loving you i think there is no end or return. no answer, no coming out of it. which… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
On the beach, at dawn: Four small stones clearly Hugging each other. How many kinds of love Might there be in the… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Drive down any road, take a train or an airplane across the world, leave your old life behind, die and be born… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
You have to be in the world to understand what the spiritual is about, and you have to be spiritual in order… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled---to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
With words, I could build a world I could live in. I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood.… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Belief isn't always easy. But this much I have learned--- if not enough else--- to live with my eyes open. — Mary Oliver Copy Share
In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. — Mary Oliver Copy Share
The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers. • To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition.” — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“Sometimes I think, were I just a little rougher made, I would go altogether to the woods—to my work entirely, and solitude, a few… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“First Snow The snow began here this morning and all day continued, its white rhetoric everywhere calling us back to why, how, whence such beauty… — mary oliver Copy Share
“What can I say that I have not said before? So I’ll say it again. The leaf has a song in it. Stone is… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“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… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“I stood like Adam in his lonely garden On that first morning, shaken out of sleep, Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves, Like… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
