Mary Oliver Quotes

When I bought my farm, I did not know what a bargain I had in the bluebirds, daffodils and thrushes; as little did I know what sublime mornings and sunsets I was buying.

At times it seemed unfair that I should be paid for my work; for driving out in the early morning with the fields glittering under the first pale sunshine and the wisps of mist still hanging on the high tops.

I needed to be in the bush. There I find solitude and beauty and purity and focus. That's where my heart lies.

Sense the blessings of the earth in the perfect arc of a ripe tangerine, the taste of warm, fresh bread, the circling flight of birds, the lavender color of the sky shining in a late afternoon rain puddle, the million times we pass other beings in our cars and shops and out among the trees without crashing, conflict, or harm.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.

The Amen of nature is always a flower.

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

The world is like a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorn.

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

I live near a beautiful park, and when I walk around it, the beauty of it can take your breath away. It makes you realize there is something bigger, certainly bigger than me.

And in the morning when the sun rise. Look in the water, see the blue sky. As if heaven has been laid there at our feet.

I must be mad, or very tired, When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune, And the sight of a white church above thin trees in a city square Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.

The man of humanity delights in mountains

The Navajos have a saying they live by: 'A land where there is time enough and room enough.' I want that, too.

The world is so full and abundant it is like a pregnant woman carrying a child in one arm and leading another by the hand. Every puddle in the lane is ringed with sipping butterflied that fly up in flutter when you walk past in the late morning on your way to get the mail.

Why, Yrael?” it said, as the last of the dark gave way to silver, and the shining sphere of metal sank slowly to the ground. “Why?” “Life,” said Yrael, who was more Mogget than it ever knew. “Fish and fowl, warm sun and shady trees, the field mice in the wheat, under the cool light of the moon.

She sat down on one of her grandmother's uncomfortable armchairs, and the cat sprang up into her lap and made itself comfortable. The light that came through the picture window was daylight, real golden late-afternoon daylight, not a white mist light. The sky was a robin's-egg blue, and Coraline could see trees and, beyond the trees, green hills, which faded on the horizon into purples and grays. The sky had never seemed so sky, the world had never seemed so world ... Nothing, she thought, had ever been so interesting.

A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.

Only spread a fern-frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.

From the grasses in the field to the stars in the sky, each one is doing just that; and there is such profound peace and surpassing beauty in nature because none of these tries forcibly to transgress its limitations.

Is not thy home among the flowers?

Most gladly would I give the blood-stained laurel for the first violet which March brings us, the fragrant pledge of the new-fledged year.