653 Quotes by Mary Oliver

Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

What is one to do with such moments, such memories, but cherish them? Who knows what is beyond the known? And if you think that any day the secret of light might come, would you not keep the house of your mind ready? Would you not cleanse your study of all that is cheap, or trivial? Would you not live in continual hope, and pleasure, and excitement?

I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn’t just an idea.

If I’ve done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.

Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?

And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness – the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books – can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.

What is your heart doing now? “Remembering. Remembering!

Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?

Don’t we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life.