Mary Oliver Quotes

154 Sourced Quotes

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

Mary Oliver
When I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose,
know that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

Mary Oliver
When I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

Mary Oliver
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.

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.

Mary Oliver
Praying It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate, this isn't a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver
The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.

Mary Oliver
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.

Mary Oliver
There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?

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

Mary Oliver
Belief isn't always easy.
But this much I have learned—
if not enough else—
to live with my eyes open.

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

Mary Oliver
I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us...

Mary Oliver
Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When it does, it grows sweeter.

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.

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

Mary Oliver
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.

Mary Oliver
Something totally unexpected,
like a barking cat.

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. (from Mysteries, Yes)

Mary Oliver
The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, frog voice; now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever from, One or Two Things

Mary Oliver
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.

Mary Oliver
What countries, what visitations,
what pomp
would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods
on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain?

Mary Oliver
Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.

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

Mary Oliver
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
If the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Mary Oliver
No poem is about one of us, or some of us, but is about all of us. It is part of a long document about the species. Every poem is about my life but also it is about your life, and a hundred thousand lives to come. That one person wrote it is not nearly so important or so interesting as that it pertains to us all.

Mary Oliver
When When it's over, it's over, and we don't know any of us, what happens then. So I try not to miss anything. I think, in my whole life, I have never missed The full moon or the slipper of its coming back. Or, a kiss. Well, yes, especially a kiss.

Mary Oliver
It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over...

Mary Oliver
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?

Mary Oliver