Mary Oliver Rivers Quotations

... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising.

I would say that there exists a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves-we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together, we are each other's destiny.

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.

Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation

Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.

Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?