Mary Oliver Quotes About Dogs

Quotes about: Dogs

• 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?

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Rivers, Honor

  Mary Oliver (2013). “Dog Songs: Deluxe Edition”, p.63, Penguin

• Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Joyfulness, Small Gifts

  Mary Oliver (2013). “Dog Songs: Deluxe Edition”, p.63, Penguin

• A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Smell, World

  FaceBook post by Mary Oliver from May 21, 2015

• I have a little dog who likes to nap with me. He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck. He is sweeter than soap. He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace, which can't even bark.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Naps, Necks

  Mary Oliver (2005). “New and Selected Poems, Volume Two”, Beacon Press (MA)

• I had a dog who loved flowers. Briskly she went through the fields, yet paused for the honeysuckle or the rose, her dark head and her wet nose touching the face of every one with its petals of silk with its fragrance rising into the air where the bees, their bodies heavy with pollen hovered - and easily she adored every blossom not in the serious careful way that we choose this blossom or that blossom the way we praise or don't praise - the way we love or don't love - but the way we long to be - that happy in the heaven of earth - that wild, that loving.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Flower, Dark

• 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

• You may not agree, you may not care, but if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world — and there are plenty — very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Book, Sight

  Mary Oliver (2013). “Dog Songs: Deluxe Edition”, p.11, Penguin

• A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them ... A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing. . .

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Rain, Law

  Mary Oliver (2017). “Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver”, p.49, Penguin

• And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold- but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy- and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and Amazons flowing.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Book, Fate

  Mary Oliver (2016). “Upstream: Selected Essays”, p.17, Penguin

• The sweetness of dogs (fifteen) What do you say, Percy? I am thinking of sitting out on the sand to watch the moon rise. Full tonight. So we go and the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me shudder, makes me think about time and space, makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven. Thus we sit, I thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s perfect beauty and also, oh! How rich it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile, leans against me and gazes up into my face. As though I were his perfect moon.

  Mary Oliver

  Beautiful, Dog, Grateful

• The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, frog voice; now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever from, One or Two Things

  Mary Oliver

  Wise, Dog, Two

  Mary Oliver (2014). “Dream Work”, p.37, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

• In your hands The dog, the donkey, surely they know They are alive. Who would argue otherwise? But now, after years of consideration, I am getting beyond that. What about the sunflowers? What about The tulips, and the pines? Listen, all you have to do is start and There’ll be no stopping. What about mountains? What about water Slipping over rocks? And speaking of stones, what about The little ones you can Hold in your hands, their heartbeats So secret, so hidden it may take years Before, finally, you hear them?

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Rocks, Hands

• LITTLE DOGS RHAPSODY IN THE NIGHT (PERCY THREE) He puts his cheek against mine and makes small, expressive sounds. And when I'm awake, or awake enough he turns upside down, his four paws in the air and his eyes dark and fervent. Tell me you love me, he says. Tell me again. Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over he gets to ask it. I get to tell.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Eye, Dark

  Mary Oliver (2017). “Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver”, p.43, Penguin

• A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Adorable, Loving Friends

  Mary Oliver (2013). “Dog Songs: Deluxe Edition”, p.51, Penguin

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