Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from A Thousand Mornings: Poems:
“I Go Down To The ShoreI go down to the shore in the morningand depending on the hour the wavesare rolling in or moving out,and I say, oh, I am miserable,what shall—what should I do? And the sea saysin its lovely voice:Excuse me, I have work to do.”
“And now you'll be telling storiesof my coming backand they won't be false, and they won't be truebut they'll be real”
“For some things there are no wrong seasons. Which is what I dream of for me.”
“A Thousand MorningsAll night my heart makes its wayhowever it can over the rough groundof uncertainties, but only until nightmeets and then is overwhelmed bymorning, the light deepening, thewind easing and just waiting, as Itoo wait (and when have I ever beendisappointed?) for redbird to sing”
“The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.”
“Three Things to RememberAs long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules. Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules. Sometimes there are no rules.”
“The man who has many answersis often foundin the theaters of informationwhere he offers, graciously,his deep findings.While the man who has only questions,to comfort himself, makes music.”
“In Our Woods, Sometimes a Rare MusicEvery springI hear the thrush singingin the glowing woodshe is only passing through.His voice is deep,then he lifts it until it seemsto fall from the sky.I am thrilled.I am grateful.Then, by the end of morning,he's gone, nothing but silenceout of the treewhere he rested for a night.And this I find acceptable.Not enough is a poor life.But too much is, well, too much.Imagine Verdi or Mahlerevery day, all day.It would exhaust anyone.”
“I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really call being alive.”
“Today I'm flying low and I'm not saying a word. I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I'm taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I'm traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.”
“Poem of the One WorldThis morningthe beautiful white heronwas floating along above the waterand then into the sky of thisthe one worldwe all belong towhere everythingsooner or lateris a part of everything elsewhich thought made me feelfor a little whilequite beautiful myself.”
“Foolishness? No, It’s NotSometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. To do this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a little book. So I suppose, from their point of view, it’s reasonable that my friends say: what foolishness! She’s got her head in the clouds again.But it’s not. Of course I have to give up, but by then I’m half crazy with the wonder of it — the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.”
“from Hum, HumOh the house of denial has thick wallsand very small windowsand whoever lives there, little by little, will turn to stone. In those years I did everything I could do and I did it in the dark— I mean, without understanding. I ran away. I ran away again(from poem: Hum, Hum)”
“I Have Decided I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not talking about a vacation. Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am. Are you following me?”
“from the poem Hum, HumThe resurrection of the morning.The mystery of the night.The hummingbird's wings.The excitement of thunder.The rainbow in the waterfall.Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields.”
“The Morning PaperRead one newspaper daily (the morning editionis the bestfor by evening you now that you at leasthave lived through another day)and let the disasters, the unbelievableyet approved decisionssoak in.I don't need to name the countries, ours among them.What keeps us from falling down, our facesto the ground; ashamed, ashamed?”
“that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained— are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.”
“TrulyI try to be good but sometimesa person just has to break out andact like the wild and springy thingone used to be. It’s impossible notto remember wild and want it back. Soif someday you can’t find me you mightlook into that tree or—of courseit’s possible—under it.”
“When a man says he hears angels singing,he hears angels singing.”
“Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. To do this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a little book. So I suppose, from their point of view, it’s reasonable that my friends say: what foolishness! She’s got her head in the clouds again. But it’s not. Of course I have to give up, but by then I’m half crazy with the wonder of it—the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.”
“The MockingbirdAll summer the mockingbird in his pearl-gray coat and his white-windowed wings flies from the hedge to the top of the pine and begins to sing, but it’s neither lilting nor lovely, for he is the thief of other sounds— whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges plus all the songs of other birds in his neighborhood; mimicking and elaborating, he sings with humor and bravado, so I have to wait a long time for the softer voice of his own life to come through. He begins by giving up all his usual flutter and settling down on the pine’s forelock then looking around as though to make sure he’s alone; then he slaps each wing against his breast, where his heart is, and, copying nothing, begins easing into it as though it was not half so easy as rollicking, as though his subject now was his true self, which of course was as dark and secret as anyone else’s, and it was too hard— perhaps you understand— to speak or to sing it to anything or anyone but the sky.”
“Three Things to RememberAs long as you’re dancing, you canbreak the rules.Sometimes breaking the rules is justextending the rules.Sometimes there are no rules.”
“Today Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word. I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.”
“TidesEvery day the sea blue gray green lavender pulls away leaving the harbor’s dark-cobbled undercoat slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls walk there among old whalebones, the white spines of fish blink from the strandy stew as the hours tick over; and then far out the faint, sheer line turns, rustling over the slack, the outer bars, over the green-furred flats, over the clam beds, slippery logs, barnacle-studded stones, dragging the shining sheets forward, deepening, pushing, wreathing together wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures spilling over themselves, lapping blue gray green lavender, never resting, not ever but fashioning shore, continent, everything. And here you may find me on almost any morning walking along the shore so light-footed so casual.”
“Sleep comes its little while. Then I wake in the valley of midnight or three a.m. to the first fragrances of spring which is coming, all by itself, no matter what. My heart says, what you thought you have you do not have. My body says, will this pounding ever stop? My heart says: there, there, be a good student. My body says: let me up and out, I want to fondle those soft white flowers, open in the night.”
“There are lots of ways to dance and to spin, sometimes it just starts my feet first then my entire body, I am spinning no one can see it but it is happening. I am so glad to be alive, I am so glad to be loving and loved. Even if I were close to the finish, even if I were at my final breath, I would be here to take a stand, bereft of such astonishments, but for them. If I were a Sufi for sure I would be one of the spinning kind.”
“From the poem: The First Time Percy Came BackYes, it’s all different,” he said.“You’re going to be very surprised.”But I wasn’t thinking of that. I onlywanted to hold him. “Listen,” he said,“I miss that too.And now you’ll be telling storiesof my coming backand they won’t be false, and they won’t be true,but they’ll be real.”And then, as he used to, he said, “Let’s go!”And we walked down the beach together.”
“Extending the Airport RunwayThe good citizens of the commissioncast their votesfor more of everything.Very early in the morningI go outto the pale dunes, to look overthe empty spacesof the wilderness.For something is there,something is there when nothing is there but itself,that is not there when anything else is.Alas,the good citizens of the commissionhave never seen it,whatever it is,formless, yet palpable.Very shining, very delicate.Very rare.”
“Sleep comes its little while. Then I wake in the valley of midnight or three a.m. to the first fragrances of spring which is coming, all by itself, no matter what.”
“How perfect to be aboard a ship withmaybe a hundred years still in my pocket.But it's late, for all of us,and in truth the only ship there isis the ship we are all onburning the world as we go.”
