98 Mary Oliver Quotes To Refresh You

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Life , Me

  

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

Me

  

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

Life

  

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

Life

  

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

Singing

  

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

Life

  

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

  

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.

Think

  

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.

  

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.

Never

  

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.

Time

  

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. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.

  

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.

  

The Uses Of Sorrow (In my sleep I dreamed this poem) Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.

Me

  

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

  

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. 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.

  

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

Yourself

  

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

  

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?

Life , Me

  

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

  

"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.

Like

  

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. --from WHEN DEATH COMES

Life

  

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

Life

  

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

  

Maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us--

  

He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.

  

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

  

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

  

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

Time

  

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.

Like , Me

  

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.

  

I know many lives worth living.

  

But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.

  

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.

  

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.

  

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

  

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

Life

  

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.

  

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.

Life

  

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.

Life , Trying

  

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

  

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.

Life

  

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

  

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.

  

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

  

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.

Life

  

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.

Me , Think

  

Poetry is a life-cherishing force.

  

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.

  

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.

Like

  

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

  

What will you do with your one precious, wild life?

Life

  

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

Like

  

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

  

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

Yourself

  

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

Me

  

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.

  

The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.

  

THREE THINGS TO REMEMBER As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules. Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules. Sometimes there are no rules.

  

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.

Never

  

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. 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. Yes indeed.

  

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.

Music

  

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.

  

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...

  

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

  

Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.

  

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

  

Therefore, dark past, I’m about to do it. I’m about to forgive you for everything.

  

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

Life

  

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

  

Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving

  

It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.

  

Be prepared. A dog is adorable and noble. A dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.

  

You’re like a little wild thing that was never sent to school.

Like , Never

  

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.

Me

  

As long as you're dancing, you can Break the rules. Sometimes breaking the rules is just Extending the rules. Sometimes there are no rules.

  

Sometimes I really believe it, that I am going to save my life a little.

  

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

  

Knowledge has entertained me and it has shaped me and it has failed me. Something in me still starves.

Me

  

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

Time

  

Come with me into the woods where spring is advancing, as it does, no matter what, not being singular or particular, but one of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.

Me

  

Look, hasn't my body already felt like the body of a flower?

Like

  

Oh Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing towards you.

  

...because my life without you would be a place of parched and broken trees...

Life

  

Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell others.

  

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.

  

Sing, if you can sing, and it not still be musical inside yourself.

Yourself

  

The resurrection of the morning. The mystery of the night. The hummingbird's wings. The excitement of thunder. The rainbow in the waterfall. Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields.

  

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

  

Love, love, love, says Percy. And run 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.

  

You too can be carved anew by the details of your devotion.

  

How could there be a day in your whole life that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?

Life

  

My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—equal seekers of sweetness.

  

How shall I touch you unless it is everywhere?