653 Quotes by Mary Oliver

The Uses Of Sorrow(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)Someone I loved once gave mea box full of darkness.It took me years to understandthat this, too, was a gift.

I Go Down To The ShoreI go down to the shore in the morningand depending on the hour the wavesare rolling in or moving out,and I say, oh, I am miserable,what shall—what should I do? And the sea saysin its lovely voice:Excuse me, I have work to do.

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 as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

Extending the Airport RunwayThe good citizens of the commissioncast their votesfor more of everything.Very early in the morningI go outto the pale dunes, to look overthe empty spacesof the wilderness.For something is there,something is there when nothing is there but itself,that is not there when anything else is.Alas,the good citizens of the commissionhave never seen it,whatever it is,formless, yet palpable.Very shining, very delicate.Very rare.

I know many lives worth living.

the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.I want to believe I am lookinginto the white fire of a great mystery.I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—that the light is everything—that it is more than the sumof each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.

The Old Poets Of ChinaWherever I am, the world comes after me.It offers me its busyness. It does not believethat I do not want it. Now I understandwhy the old poets of China went so far and highinto the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.