In the words of Mary Oliver:
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us.
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.
This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention.
Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dak trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more the prettiness.
In the glare of your mind, be modest. And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.
Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
Far off in the red mangroves an alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass and lies there, studying his poems.
You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.
I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.
Look, I want to love this world as though it's the last chance I'm ever going to get to be alive and know it.
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.
Poetry is a serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.
We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness.
It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.
I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
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.
What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy.
After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.
Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When it does, it grows sweeter.
A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.
The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.
We can know a lot. And still, no doubt, there are rash and wonderful ideas brewing somewhere; there are many surprises yet to come.
Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.
A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.
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.
What misery to be afraid of death. What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.
You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.
Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.
When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider the orderliness of the world.
If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.
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.
It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over.
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