Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

Mary Oliver
Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words,...
Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words,...
Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words,...
Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words,...
About This Quote

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. –Doris Lessing

Source: A Poetry Handbook

Some Similar Quotes
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  2. To be great, be whole; Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you. Be whole in everything. Put all you are Into the smallest thing you do. So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor Because it blooms up above. - Fernando Pessoa

  3. The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it. - Jane Kenyon

  4. Truth is a friendthat asks for loyaltyand acceptancethen it enters our heartsdissolving the boundariesfreeing us from lonliness - Nirmala

  5. Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness. - Kahlil Gibran

More Quotes By Mary Oliver
  1. Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

  2. Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morningand spread it over the fieldsand into the faces of the tulipsand the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, themiserable and the crotchety — best preacher that ever...

  3. You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

  4. When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don't want to wonderif I have made of my life something particular, and...

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

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