110+ Mary Oliver Quotes On Gratitude, Friendship And Nature

Mary Oliver was an American poet and essayist who was born on September 10, 1935. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 for her collection American Primitive. Her work is known for its celebration of the natural world and its spiritual themes. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Mary Oliver on life, love, gratitude.

Top 10 Mary Oliver Quotes

1. it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.
2. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
3. Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
4. 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.
5. Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
6. In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.
7. I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.
8. Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
9. You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
10. I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.

Mary Oliver Short Quotes

• I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us.
• It's morning, and again I am that lucky person who is in it.
• Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
• I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
• Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.
• You must not ever stop being whimsical.
• You, too, can be carved anew by the details of your devotion.
• So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
• Attention is the beginning of devotion.
• Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine

Mary Oliver Quotes About Life

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. — Mary Oliver

And I say to my heart: rave on. — Mary Oliver

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. — Mary Oliver

Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that. — Mary Oliver

Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? — Mary Oliver

Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life. — Mary Oliver

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. — Mary Oliver

There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay. — Mary Oliver

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? — 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. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes About Love

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

Look, I want to love this world as though it's the last chance I'm ever going to get to be alive and know it. — Mary Oliver

There is only one question: / how to love this world. — Mary Oliver

Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world. — 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. — Mary Oliver

A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist. — Mary Oliver

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours. — Mary Oliver

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. — Mary Oliver

I GO DOWN TO THE SHORE 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. — Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes About Nature

It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else. — Mary Oliver

Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dak trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more the prettiness. — Mary Oliver

Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance. — Mary Oliver

...whoever you are, not matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting - over & over announcing your place in the family of things. — Mary Oliver

The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. — Mary Oliver

... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores. — Mary Oliver

The sea isn't a place but a fact, and a mystery. — Mary Oliver

The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own. — Mary Oliver

The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. I don't say this without reckoning in the sorrow, the worry, the many diminishments. But surely it is then that a person's character shines or glooms. — Mary Oliver

Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes About Joy

Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. — Mary Oliver

We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body. — Mary Oliver

Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. — Mary Oliver

Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don't Hesitate) — Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes About Writing

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

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response. — Mary Oliver

I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write. — Mary Oliver

Believe me, if anybody has a job and starts at 9, there's no reason why they can't get up at 4:30 or five and write for a couple of hours, and give their employers their second-best effort of the day - which is what I did. — Mary Oliver

I'd rather write about polar bears than people. — Mary Oliver

I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings. — Mary Oliver

I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else. — Mary Oliver

I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force. — Mary Oliver

... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers. — Mary Oliver

Writing a poem ... is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes About Poetry

Poetry is a serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings. — Mary Oliver

I got saved by poetry. And I got saved by the beauty of the world. — Mary Oliver

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work. — Mary Oliver

I grew up in a sad, depressed place. I got out. Poetry saved my life. — Mary Oliver

A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry. — Mary Oliver

The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language. — Mary Oliver

Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude. — Mary Oliver

Poetry is meant to be heard. — Mary Oliver

On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel? — Mary Oliver

Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes About Dogs

I have a little dog who likes to nap with me. He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck. He is sweeter than soap. He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace, which can't even bark. — Mary Oliver

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. — 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

Mary Oliver Quotes About Inspiring

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

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

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable and beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings. — Mary Oliver

Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness. — Mary Oliver

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. — Mary Oliver

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes About Write

I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life. — Mary Oliver

It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone. — Mary Oliver

I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write. — Mary Oliver

I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it. — Mary Oliver

He is exactly the poem I wanted to write. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes About Work

My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. — Mary Oliver

Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. — Mary Oliver

Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious. — Mary Oliver

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. — 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. — Mary Oliver

I simply do not distinguish between work and play. — Mary Oliver

My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work. — Mary Oliver

I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read. — Mary Oliver

I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while. — Mary Oliver

There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes About Poems

Far off in the red mangroves an alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass and lies there, studying his poems. — 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

As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other. — Mary Oliver

I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished. — Mary Oliver

The language of the poem is the language of particulars. — Mary Oliver

In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it. — Mary Oliver

Maybe the world, without us, is the real poem. — Mary Oliver

I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them. — Mary Oliver

Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together. — 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

Mary Oliver Quotes About World

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination. — 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

There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they are in another world altogether. — Mary Oliver

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider the orderliness of the world. — Mary Oliver

And over one more set of hills, along the sea, the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness and are giving it back to the world. If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness. — Mary Oliver

I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation. — Mary Oliver

Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful? — Mary Oliver

After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world. — Mary Oliver

The world is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is the multiform utterly obedient to a mystery. — Mary Oliver

Of course! The path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it. — Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Famous Quotes And Sayings

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness. — Mary Oliver

And I say to my heart: rave on. — Mary Oliver

There are things you can’t reach. But You can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god. And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier. I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around As though with your arms open. — Mary Oliver

How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of attention, his wings pure light — Mary Oliver

Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree... 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. — Mary Oliver

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. — Mary Oliver

And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar. — Mary Oliver

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. — 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. — Mary Oliver

And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead / children out of the fields into the text / of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better than the grass. — Mary Oliver

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. — Mary Oliver

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul? — Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars. — Mary Oliver

I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things. — Mary Oliver

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

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. — 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

maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us-- — Mary Oliver

It's not a competition, it's a doorway. — Mary Oliver

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? — Mary Oliver

Invention hovers always a little above the rules. — Mary Oliver

In the glare of your mind, be modest. And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling. — Mary Oliver

I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it. — Mary Oliver

Things take the time they take. don't worry. How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine? — Mary Oliver

The sea is the most beautiful face in our universe. — Mary Oliver

And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you. — Mary Oliver

It is better for the heart to break, than not to break. — Mary Oliver

What can we do about God, who makes and then breaks every god-forsaken, beautiful day? — Mary Oliver

But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was? — Mary Oliver

I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life. — Mary Oliver

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

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. — Mary Oliver

I climb, I backtrack. I float. I ramble my way home. — Mary Oliver

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

Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song. — Mary Oliver

This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention. — Mary Oliver

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention. — 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 learned to build bookshelves and brought books to my room, gathering them around me thickly. I read by day and into the night. I thought about perfectibility, and deism, and adjectives, and clouds, and the foxes, I locked my door, from the inside, and leaped from the roof and went to the woods, by day or darkness. — Mary Oliver

Do you cherish your humble and silky life? — Mary Oliver

Life Lessons by Mary Oliver

1. Mary Oliver's poetry encourages us to appreciate the beauty of the natural world and to live life with intention and gratitude.
2. Through her poetry, she teaches us to be mindful of our actions and to be present in the moment, cherishing the small moments of joy and wonder that life has to offer.
3. Mary Oliver also reminds us to be kind and compassionate towards ourselves and others, showing us that even in the darkest of times, there is still hope and beauty to be found.