I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? When it's over, I want to… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. I don't say this without reckoning in the sorrow, the… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“A Thousand Mornings All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass,… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Belief isn't always easy. But this much I have learned--- if not enough else--- to live with my eyes open. — Mary Oliver Copy Share
In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. — Mary Oliver Copy Share
The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers. • To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition.” — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“Sometimes I think, were I just a little rougher made, I would go altogether to the woods—to my work entirely, and solitude, a few… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“First Snow The snow began here this morning and all day continued, its white rhetoric everywhere calling us back to why, how, whence such beauty… — mary oliver Copy Share
“What can I say that I have not said before? So I’ll say it again. The leaf has a song in it. Stone is… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“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… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“I stood like Adam in his lonely garden On that first morning, shaken out of sleep, Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves, Like… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
