Mary Oliver Quotes

“So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God, one of which was you.”

“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.”

“I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.”

“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.”

“The man who has many answers
is often found
in the theaters of information
where he offers, graciously,
his deep findings.

While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.”

“Love yourself. Then forget it.
Then, love the world.”

“So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

And live
your life.”

“Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?”

“When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.”

“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.”

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.

--from WHEN DEATH COMES”

“I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.”

“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

“Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.”

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force.”

“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.”

“Listen, whatever you see and love—
that’s where you are.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

“Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn't amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me.”

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

“I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.”

“maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us”

“He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.”

“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.”

“I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be. It's impossible not
to remember wild an want it back.”

“Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”

“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.”

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

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”

“You can have the other words — chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace.”

“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.”

“I am a performing artist; I perform admiration.
Come with me, I want my poems to say. And do the same.”

“I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything — other people, trees, clouds.”

“Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue.
But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function —
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought.
Glory to the world, that good teacher.”

“… there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

“Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”

“It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.”

“it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.”

“Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.”

“the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own”

“And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”

“I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us…”

“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.”

“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.”

“I know many lives worth living.”

“Also I wanted to be able to love
And we all know how that one goes, don't we?
Slowly”

“Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.”

“Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.”

“What misery to be afraid of death.
What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.”

“Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.”

“And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.”

“It's not a competition, it's a doorway.”

“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”

“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.”

“My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums…”

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.”

“For some things there are no wrong seasons. Which is what I dream of for me.”

“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.”

“I feel the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst.
Death isn't just an idea.”

“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.”

“Drive down any road,

take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your old life behind,

die and be born again~
wherever you arrive
they'll be there first,

glossy and rowdy
and indistinguishable.
The deep muscle of the world.”

“Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.”

“We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.”