653 Quotes by Mary Oliver

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.

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.

I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really call being alive.

A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.

On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?

But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?

I climb, I backtrack. I float. I ramble my way home.

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.

Why should I not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside, looking into the shining world?