Mary Oliver Quotes About Doubt

Quotes about: Doubt

• Mornings at Blackwater" For years, every morning, I drank from Blackwater Pond. It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt, the feet of ducks. And always it assuaged me from the dry bowl of the very far past. What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be, darling citizen. 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.

  Mary Oliver

  Morning, Past, Years

  Mary Oliver (2008). “Red Bird: Poems”, p.57, Beacon Press

• And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old-or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Grief, Giving

  Mary Oliver (2013). “Dog Songs: Deluxe Edition”, p.62, Penguin

• Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible.

  Mary Oliver

  Talking, Tree, Black

• You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.

  Mary Oliver

  Soul, Doubt, Rowing

  Mary Oliver (1998). “West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems”, p.46, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

  Mary Oliver

  Sweet, Lying, Sea

  Mary Oliver (2012). “A Thousand Mornings: Poems”, p.41, Penguin

• We can know a lot. And still, no doubt, there are rash and wonderful ideas brewing somewhere; there are many surprises yet to come.

  Mary Oliver

  Ideas, Doubt, Wonderful

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.91, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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