Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.

Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.

The greatest tragedy in America is not the destruction of our natural resources, though that tragedy is great. The truly great tragedy is the destruction of our human resources by our failure to fully utilize our abilities, which means that most men and women go to their graves with their music still in them.

There's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

Man has will, but woman has her way.

I do not feel betrayed. ... He has a fine record. He is a national hero. (On Oliver L North's work)

Man has his will, - but woman has her way.

For I say unto you in all sadness of conviction that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have worked alone -- when you have felt around you are a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and despair have trusted to your own unshaken will -- then only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten men who have never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought -- the subtle rapture of postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army. And if this joy should not be yours, still it is only thus you can know that you have done what lay in you to do -- can say that you have lived, and be ready for the end.

Beat a man with the strength of you argument, not with the strength of your arm.

The Amen of nature is always a flower.

Love prefers twilight to daylight.

Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.

Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom.

The man who is always worrying whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.

Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

A mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions.

No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul it takes one that knows it well -- parent, child, brother, sister, intimate.

Death tugs at my ear and says: 'Live, I am coming.'

Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.

Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.

The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one.

Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had everyone glued in their seats!" Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of it!

Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.

Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness.

Young men know the rules, but old men know the exceptions.

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.

Youth fades love droops, the leaves of friendship fall A mother's secret hope outlives them all.

The riders in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voices of friends and say to oneself, The work is done.

Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all.

The life of the law has not been logic but experience.

A person's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.

Carve every word before you let it fall.

Speak clearly, if you speak at all carve every word before you let it fall.

No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our father's have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a large part than what we suspect of what we think.

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say: meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it, and had better be on speaking terms with it.

The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?-Mary Oliver