"And there you are on the shore,..." - Quote by Mary Oliver
And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.
More by Mary Oliver
“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled---to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.”
“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.”
“I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read.”
More on Acceptance
“I will love you if you are stupid, if you slip and fall on your face, if you do the wrong thing, if you make mistakes, if you behave like a human being — I will love you no matter.”
“That's the way they are. You must not hold it against them. Children should be very understanding of grown-ups.”
“If you don't have a good relationship with the now, you don't have a goodrelationship with life.”
More on Nature
“Why should be fruit be held inferior to the flower?”
“The peasants of the Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one pup that is killed by the mother for fear that on growing up it would devour the other little ones.”
“The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought.”