Mary Oliver Quotes

When one's dead, one's dead... This squirrel will become earth all in his time. And still later on, there'll grow new trees from him, with new squirrels skipping about in them. Do you think that's so very sad?

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

I think when you think of death as being part of the life cycle and recognize that death is an inevitability for our species because the world has to be renewed with each death, then the hope becomes when it is renewed it will be renewed by people on whom I have had some influence for good.

What ye have been ye still shall be, When we are dust the dust among, O yellow flowers!

Death is not a word to fear, any more than birth is.

Everything born has to die, in order to make room for the future.

The closer we come to the negative, to death, the more we blossom.

I have a wish. It as a fear as well - that in my end will be my beginning.

In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that have germinated in it and have left it, leaving behind them only a trifling, infinitesimal part of their riches.

This is the spot where I will lie When life has had enough of me, These are the grasses that will blow Above me like a living sea. These gay old lilies will not shrink To draw their life from death of mine, And I will give my body's fire To make blue flowers on this vine. "O Soul," I said, "have you no tears? Was not the body dear to you?" I heard my soul say carelessly, "The myrtle flowers will grow more blue.

Men in their generations are like the leaves of the trees. The wind blows and one year's leaves are scattered on the ground; but the trees burst into bud and put on fresh ones when the spring comes round.

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.

Everything that gets born dies.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.

We are washed both on coming into the world and on going out of it, and we take no pleasure from the first washing nor any profit from the last.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

He could not die when trees were green, for he loved the time too well.

Everything dies, from the smallest blade of grass to the biggest galaxy.

Destroying is a necessary function in life. Everything has its season, and all things eventually lose their effectiveness and die.

I've become more comfortable as time has gone on with saying goodbye because... I've been having so many conversations about the cyclical nature of life. It just keeps going.

It ends all things: birds, trees, flowers, mountain tops, and business; it grinds stones to sand, and as terrible as it is, and it's the most beautiful thing we have in our lives - time.

I should have known I am the rain. I am the land and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.

Things die. But they don't always stay dead. Believe me, I know.