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Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes

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Famous Mary Oliver Quotes

“Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and the crotchety – best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light – good morning, good morning, good morning. Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”

MadeHandsLightHappensFacesUniverseStarsWatchesKindnessMorningDarknessSunFieldsGloryWindowDearSpreadWarmMiserableEaseWhere You AreTouchingPreacherHelloStart The DayNoddingMorning Glory
Book:Why I Wake Early: New Poems
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“GOING TO WALDEN It isn't very far as highways lie. I might be back by nightfall, having seen The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water. Friends argue that I might be wiser for it. They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper: How dull we grow from hurrying here and there! Many have gone, and think me half a fool To miss a day away in the cool country. Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish, Going to Walden is not so easy a thing As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult Trick of living, and finding it where you are.”

ThinkingBookCountryMightLyingGrowsEasyDifficultWaterHalfGoneClearMissingFoolFindingsStonesGreenArguingTricksDullRoughCherishWhere You AreWiserHighwaysYankeesHere And ThereHurryingNightfallClear Water
Book:The River Styx, Ohio, and other poems
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“I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. 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.”

PeopleWorldHeartBookCharacterMysteryTreeWorstFieldsStandingCloudsConfusionAntidoteDeep InsideOtherness
Book:Upstream: Selected Essays
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“When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”

IfsWorldWantLifeInspirationalMadeRealEndsWonderThis WorldParticularArmsMarriedArgumentFrightenedBridesAmazementBridegroom
Author:Mary Oliver
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“And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold- but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy- and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and Amazons flowing.”

WorldFirstsMayTwoBookHouseIndividualEnergyLostParentMy OwnPiecesFateDogPaperBuiltStonesShouldersBoardsTwo ThingsBlankFoxesSteadfastTrue LifeOld DogOld Houses
Book:Upstream: Selected Essays
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