Mary Oliver Rose Quotes & Sayings

When I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing. — Mary Oliver

How many mysteries have you seen in your lifetime? How many nets pulled full over the boat's side, each silver body ready or not falling into submission? How many roses in early summer uncurling above the pale sands then falling back in unfathomable willingness? And what can you say? Glory to the rose and the leaf, to the seed, to the silver fish. Glory to time and the wild fields, and to joy. And to grief's shock and torpor, its near swoon. — Mary Oliver

I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,

yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head

and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one

with its petals
of silk
with its fragrance
rising

into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen

hovered -
and easily
she adored
every blossom

not in the serious
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom

the way we praise or don't praise -
the way we love
or don't love -
but the way

we long to be -
that happy
in the heaven of earth -
that wild, that loving. — Mary Oliver

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike
and yet it is the most precious thing we have. — Albert Einstein

I waste at least an hour every day lying in bed. Then I waste time pacing. I waste time thinking. I waste time being quiet and not saying anything because I'm afraid I'll stutter. — Ned Vizzini

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better. — Mary Oliver

Fear tolerated is faith contaminated. — Kenneth Copeland

This question: 'How do I deal with a bully without becoming a thug in return?' has been with me ever since I was a child. — Scilla Elworthy

only nutcases want to be president. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
"Don't love you life
too much," it said,

and vanished
into the world. — Mary Oliver

I'm not sexist, I'd f**k both sexes equally if I was gay - John Blu — David Gallie

You came and fell upon me, I was sitting in the wicker chair. The wicker exclaimed as your weight fell upon me. You were light, I thought, and I thought how good it was of you to do this. We'd never touched before. — Donald Barthelme

Very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all. — C.S. Lewis

Stalking's when you follow the person and won't leave them alone. Waiting is different. It's a form of tribute, like a vigil, and fate rewards it. — Caragh M. O'Brien

You show me what someone listens to, I'll tell you everything you want to know about his soul. (For instance, a bunch of Nickelback albums would have indicated he never had a soul in the first place.) — Tad Williams

If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.
I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn't mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.
Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question. — Mary Oliver

We may be touched by the most powerful of suppositions--even to a certainty--as we stand in the rose petals of the sun and hear a murmur from the wind no louder than the sound it makes as it dozes under the bee's wings. This, too, I suggest, is the weather, and worthy of report. — Mary Oliver