And never grow a wishbone, daughter,
where your backbone ought to be.
“
| — |
Clementine Paddleford, “For My Daughter”
|
I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.
“
| — |
Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”
|
Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths
Enwrought with golden and silver light
The blue, the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light
I would spread these cloths under your feet
But I, being poor, have only my dreams
I have spread my dreams under your feet
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
“
| — |
William Butler Yeats, “He Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven”
|
I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable, beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
“
| — |
Mary Oliver, “Starlings in Winter”
|
It is a terrible thing
To be so open: it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.
“
| — |
Sylvia Plath, “Three Women”
|
You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn’t need any more of that sound.
“
| — |
Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems (“The Poet with His Face in His Hands”)
|
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
“
| — |
Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata”
|
Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.
“
| — |
T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
|
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.
“
| — |
Mary Oliver, “The Ponds” (House of Light)
|
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
“
| — |
Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”
|
That’s all I’ve ever dreamed of… To make the world a better place. To bring some beauty to the drab humdrum corners of the soul. You can do it with a toaster, you can do it with a poem, you can do it by reaching out your hand to a stranger. It doesn’t matter what form it takes. To leave the world a little better than you found it. That’s the best a man can ever do.
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
“
| — |
Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems
|
Listen to the MUSN’TS, child,
Listen to the DON’TS
Listen to the SHOULDN’TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me –
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.
“
| — |
Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends
|
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.
“
| — |
Mary Oliver, “When Death Comes”, New and Selected Poems
|
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
“
| — |
Maya Angelou, Excerpt from “Still I Rise”
|
