Play
The archive, at your fingertips
Try an author, a thought, or a phrase in “quotes”.↑ ↓ Navigate · Esc Close

0 words found

Explore all results ↗
MOMary Oliver

108 collected words

Mary Oliver

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

▷ Play this voiceSearch these words ↗Place in time ↗justicehappinesslifeworkknowledgeminddeathlove

Quotations and sayings

02Undated
But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely, and from which we benefit. For wilderness is our first home too, and in our wild ride into modernity with all its concerns and problems we need also all the good attachments to that origin that we can keep or restore. Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world. The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, and the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. There is not a dog that romps and runs but we learn from him.The other dog—the one that all its life walks leashed and obedient down the sidewalk—is what a chair is to a tree. It is a possession only, the ornament of a human life. Such dogs can remind us of nothing large or noble or mysterious or lost. They cannot make us sweeter or more kind.Only unleashed dogs can do that. They are a kind of poetry themselves when they are devoted not only to us but to the wet night, to the moon and the rabbit-smell in the grass and their own bodies leaping forward.
Mary Oliver / quote
↗
07Undated
MYSTERIES, YES Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising. How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken. How people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem. 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.
Mary Oliver / quote
↗
15Undated
The Pond"August of another summer, and once again I am drinking the sunand the lilies again are spread across the water. I know now what they want is to touch each other. I have not been here for many yearsduring which time I kept living my life. Like the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he could sing, I wish I could sing. A little thanks from every throat would be appropriate. This is how it has been, and this is how it is: All my life I have been able to feel happiness, except whatever was not happiness, which I also remember. Each of us wears a shadow. But just now it is summer againand I am watching the lilies bow to each other, then slide on the wind and the tug of desire, close, close to one another, Soon now, I'll turn and start for home. And who knows, maybe I'll be singing.
Mary Oliver / quote
↗
20Undated
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting readyto break my heartas the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingersand they open —pools of lace, white and pink —and all day the black ants climb over them,boring their deep and mysterious holesinto the curls, craving the sweet sap, taking it awayto their dark, underground cities —and all dayunder the shifty wind, as in a dance to the great wedding,the flowers bend their bright bodies, and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise, their red stems holdingall that dampness and recklessness gladly and lightly, and there it is again — beauty the brave, the exemplary,blazing open. Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagernessto be wild and perfect for a moment, before they arenothing, forever?
Mary Oliver / quote
↗