Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliveris an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth10 September 1935
CityMaple Heights, OH
CountryUnited States of America
damage want honest
I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.
what-matters mind let-me
Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
world littles pity
When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.
morning worry body
I saw that worrying had come to nothing and gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.
beautiful dog grateful
The sweetness of dogs (fifteen) What do you say, Percy? I am thinking of sitting out on the sand to watch the moon rise. Full tonight. So we go and the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me shudder, makes me think about time and space, makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven. Thus we sit, I thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s perfect beauty and also, oh! How rich it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile, leans against me and gazes up into my face. As though I were his perfect moon.
life travel breathing
Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
writing wanted
He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.
inspirational beautiful thinking
I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable and beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings.
risk despair comfort
... Let us risk the wildest places, Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.
dog joyfulness small-gifts
Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
lying imagination heaven
Of course! The path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it.
gratitude glory
Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
lonely imagination matter
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination...
heart bird forests
Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives.