Famous Mary Oliver Quotes
"So every day"
Red Bird (2008)
"In Blackwater Woods"
American Primitive (1983)
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2
Mary Oliver Quotes about the world
“I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”
"When Death Comes"
New and Selected Poems, Volume 2 (2005)
Mary Oliver Quotes about life
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
"The Summer Day"
New and Selected Poems (1992)
Variant: What will you do with your one precious, wild life?
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
Variant: 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.
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
"Sometimes", § 4
Red Bird (2008)
Variant: Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
“Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.”
"Sometimes", § 5
Red Bird (2008)
Context: Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.
Mary Oliver: Trending quotes
Variant: Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
Source: Thirst
Mary Oliver Quotes
Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
"Wild Geese"
Dream Work (1986)
Context: 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.
"Sometimes", § 7
Red Bird (2008)
Context: Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn't amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me. After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.
“maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us”
Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
“Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
West Wind (1997)
“You can have the other words — chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace.”
"Sand Dabs, Five"
Winter Hours (1999)
Context: You can have the other words — chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
"Sand Dabs, Five"
Winter Hours (1999)
“I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything — other people, trees, clouds.”
"Staying Alive"
Blue Pastures (1995)
Context: I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything — other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion — that standing within this otherness — the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books — can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.
“I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us…”
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2
"Robert Schumann"
Dream Work (1986)
Source: Blue Pastures
“Also I wanted to be able to love
And we all know how that one goes, don't we?
Slowly”
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
"Messenger"
Variant: My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness
Source: Thirst (2006)
“For some things there are no wrong seasons. Which is what I dream of for me.”
Source: A Thousand Mornings
