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Dog Songs QUOTES

Dog Songs QUOTES

1 " No, I mean really listen. Here's a
story, and you don't have to visit many
houses to find it. One person is talking,
the other one is not really listening.
someone can look like they are but they're
actually thinking about something they
want to say, or their minds are just
wandering. Or they're looking at that
little box people hold in their hands these
days. And people get discouraged, so they
quit trying. And the very quiet people,
you may have noticed, are often the sad
people. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

2 " Listen, whatever you see and love—
that’s where you are. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

3 " Be prepared. A dog is adorable and noble.
A dog is a true and loving friend. A dog
is also a hedonist. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

4 " EVERY DOG’S STORY

I have a bed, my very own.
It’s just my size.
And sometimes I like to sleep alone
with dreams inside my eyes.

But sometimes dreams are dark and wild and creepy
and I wake and am afraid, though I don’t know why.
But I’m no longer sleepy
and too slowly the hours go by.

So I climb on the bed where the light of the moon
is shining on your face
and I know it will be morning soon.

Everybody needs a safe place. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

5 " 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 Songs

6 " 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 Songs

7 " Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

8 " How perfect to be aboard a ship with maybe a hundred years still in my pocket, but it's late for all of us. And in truth, the only ship there is, is the ship we are all on, burning the world as we go. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

9 " Here’s a story, and you don’t have to visit many
houses to find it. One person is talking,
the other one is not really listening.
Someone can look like they are but they’re
actually thinking about something they
want to say, or their minds are just
wandering. Or they’re looking at that
little box people hold in their hands these
days. And people get discouraged, so they
quit trying. And the very quiet people,
you may have noticed, are often the sad
people. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

10 " 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 Songs

11 " Okay, I said. But remember, you can’t fix
everything in the world for everybody.

“However,” said Ricky, “you can’t do
anything at all unless you begin. Haven’t
I heard you say that once or twice, or
maybe a hundred times? "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

12 " But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely, and from which we benefit. For wilderness is our first home too, and in our wild ride into modernity with all its concerns and problems we need also all the good attachments to that origin that we can keep or restore. Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world. The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, and the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. There is not a dog that romps and runs but we learn from him.

The other dog—the one that all its life walks leashed and obedient down the sidewalk—is what a chair is to a tree. It is a possession only, the ornament of a human life. Such dogs can remind us of nothing large or noble or mysterious or lost. They cannot make us sweeter or more kind.

Only unleashed dogs can do that. They are a kind of poetry themselves when they are devoted not only to us but to the wet night, to the moon and the rabbit-smell in the grass and their own bodies leaping forward. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

13 " 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 Songs

14 " We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

15 " You’re like a little wild thing
that was never sent to school. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

16 " Some things are unchangeably wild, others are stolidly tame. The tiger is wild, and the coyote, and the owl. I am tame, you are tame. There are wild things that have been altered, but only into a semblance of tameness, it is no real change. But the dog lives in both worlds. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

17 " What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? Would would this would be like without dogs? "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

18 " 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 Songs

19 " Or maybe it’s about the wonderful things that may happen if you break the ropes that are holding you. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs

20 " I had to go away for a few days so I called the kennel and made an appointment. I guess Bear overheard the conversation. “Love and company,” said Bear, “are the adornments that change everything. I know they’ll be nice to me, but I’ll be sad, sad, sad.” And pitifully he wrung his paws. I cancelled the trip. "

― Mary Oliver , Dog Songs