"You do not have to be good. You……" — Mary Oliver
"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for 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 rain are 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, call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things."
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Mary Oliver
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210 Quotes by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver has 210 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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Come with me into the woods where spring is advancing, as it does, no matter what, not being singular or…
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Each body is a lion of courage, something precious of the earth.
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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…
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Attention is the beginning of devotion.
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On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?
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And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
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And I say to my heart: rave on.
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What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?
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When I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as…
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Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dak trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being…
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I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.
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There is only one question: / how to love this world.
See all 210 quotes by Mary Oliver »
More Across Quotes
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