Mary Oliver quotes

Mary Oliver was an American poet renowned for her clear and poignant observations of the natural world. Her writing often explores themes of nature, love, and the human experience. She inspired many readers to find beauty and meaning in everyday life. Here are 132 of her quotes:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (Mary Oliver)
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. View quote
Mary Oliver
So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you. View quote
Mary Oliver
And now I understand something so frightening, and wonderful - how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar. View quote
Mary Oliver
You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound. View quote
Mary Oliver
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. View quote
Mary Oliver
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. View quote
Mary Oliver
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. View quote
Mary Oliver
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time. View quote
Mary Oliver
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed. View quote
Mary Oliver
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. (Mary Oliver)
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable. View quote
Mary Oliver
But also I say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness. View quote
Mary Oliver
Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death. View quote
Mary Oliver
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. View quote
Mary Oliver
Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life? View quote
Mary Oliver
Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled - to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. View quote
Mary Oliver
I am a performing artist; I perform admiration. Come with me, I want my poems to say. And do the same. View quote
Mary Oliver
Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say "Look!" and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads. View quote
Mary Oliver
maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us. View quote
Mary Oliver
I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings. (Mary Oliver)
It's not a competition, it's a doorway. View quote
Mary Oliver
And now you'll be telling stories of my coming back and they won't be false, and they won't be true but they'll be real. View quote
Mary Oliver
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. View quote
Mary Oliver
Sunrise What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire. View quote
Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver

Occupation: American Poet
Born: September 10, 1935
Died: January 17, 2019
Quotes count: 132
Wikipedia: Mary Oliver

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