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You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
Mary Oliver
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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.
Mary Oliver
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Something totally unexpected,
like a barking cat.
Mary Oliver
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Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say Look! and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads. (from Mysteries, Yes)
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The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, frog voice; now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever from, One or Two Things
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Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn't amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me. After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.
Mary Oliver
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What countries, what visitations,
what pomp
would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods
on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain?
Mary Oliver
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Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.
Mary Oliver
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And now you'll be telling stories of my coming back and they won't be false, and they won't be true but they'll be real
Mary Oliver
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For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
Mary Oliver
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If the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Mary Oliver
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No poem is about one of us, or some of us, but is about all of us. It is part of a long document about the species. Every poem is about my life but also it is about your life, and a hundred thousand lives to come. That one person wrote it is not nearly so important or so interesting as that it pertains to us all.
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When When it's over, it's over, and we don't know any of us, what happens then. So I try not to miss anything. I think, in my whole life, I have never missed The full moon or the slipper of its coming back. Or, a kiss. Well, yes, especially a kiss.
Mary Oliver
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It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over...
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And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?
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The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on the hunt is the world in which I live too.
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I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea.
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Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone.
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My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness
Mary Oliver
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So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.
Mary Oliver
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Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.
Mary Oliver
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In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.
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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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There is only one question: how to love this world.
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The poet dreams of the classroom I dreamed I stood up in class And I said aloud: Teacher, Why is algebra important? Sit down, he said. Then I dreamed I stood up And I said: Teacher, I'm weary of the turkeys That we have to draw every fall. May I draw a fox instead? Sit down, he said. Then I dreamed I stood up once more and said: Teacher, My heart is falling asleep And it wants to wake up. It needs to be outside. Sit down, he said.
Mary Oliver
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Quote of the day
Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned.
Ignazio Silone
Mary Oliver
Born:
September 10, 1935
Died:
January 17, 2019
(aged 83)
Bio:
Mary Oliver was an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet".
Known for:
New and Selected Poems (1992)
Dog Songs (2013)
Wild Geese: Selected Poems (1993)
A Thousand Mornings (2012)
American Primitive (1983)
Most used words:
life
love
body
light
heart
morning
time
live
dog
keep
death
beautiful
night
wanted
voice
Mary Oliver on Wikipedia
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