You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

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"There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?"

- Mary Oliver

Love

"to live in this world / you must be able / to do three things / to love what is mortal; / to hold it / against your bones knowing / your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, / to let it go"

- Mary Oliver

Love

"It is a serious thing – just to be alive – on this fresh morning – in this broken world."

- Mary Oliver

Awareness

"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."

- Mary Oliver

Awareness

"It is a serious thing–just to be alive–on this fresh morning–in this broken world."

- Mary Oliver

Awareness

More Inspiration Quotes

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"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."

- Leonardo DaVinci

Inspiration

"Man must rise above the Earth—to the top of the atmosphere and beyond—for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives."

- Socrates

Inspiration

"The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air."

- Wilbur Wright

Inspiration

"Sometimes, flying feels too God-like to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see."

- Charles A. Lindbergh

Inspiration

"I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Inspiration