Mary Oliver Quotes

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

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

I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.

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

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled -
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.

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.

The Uses Of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own

I Go Down To The Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall -
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

I know many lives worth living.

The Old Poets Of China

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

Sometimes I dream
that everything in the world is here, in my room,
in a great closet, named and orderly,

and I am here too, in front of it,
hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness -
and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing;
and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.

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.

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.

And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire -
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
-from The Buddha's Last Instruction