Skip to content

Life Quotes by Mary Oliver

79 Life quotes by Mary Oliver

All Life quotes Mary Oliver’s page

A slow river glimmers under trees as the speaker imagines lying there, learning by being nothing. She repeats the call to decide what to do with your one wild and precious life, urging you to choose wonder over pure logic. Her words suggest that a life lived with curiosity and light feels more alive.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

And I say to my heart: rave on.

Image

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

Image

Poetry is a life-cherishing force.

Image

I know many lives worth living.

Image

Who do you want to be in your one wild and precious life?

Image

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

Image

Do you cherish your humble and silky life?

Image

I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.

Image

I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a…

Image

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

Image

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

Image

When it's over I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

Image

I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things.

Image

Why should I not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside, looking into the shining world?

Image

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

Image

Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they're thirsty. That's prayer. They don't live an unconscious life,…

Image

...there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper…

Image

Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was…

Image

“If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it? Of course, it isn’t. Neither do I mean anything miraculous,…

Image

“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? While the soul, after all, is only a window, and…

Image

So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to…

Image

Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we…

Image

Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life…

Image

“A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life. Scatter your flowers over the…

Image

“You don’t want to hear the story of my life, and anyway I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen…

Image

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking…

Image

“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled— to cast aside the weight of facts and…

Image

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

Image

“If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness. I would be a fox, or…

Image

Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? When it's over, I want to…

Image

It was not a choice of writing or not writing. It was a choice of loving my life or not loving my…

Image

“The Fourth Sign of The Zodiac (Part 3) by Mary Oliver I know, you never intended to be in this world. But…

Image

“Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,…

Image

“When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from…

Image

“Gannets I am watching the white gannets blaze down into the water with the power of blunt spears and a stunning accuracy--…

Image

“There are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with…

Image

“Dogfish I wanted The past to go away, I wanted To leave it, like another country; I wanted My life to close,…

Image

“I mean, by such flightiness, something that feels unsatisfied at the center of my life — that makes me shaky, fickle, inquisitive,…

Image

Mornings at Blackwater" For years, every morning, I drank from Blackwater Pond. It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,…

Image

“Now of all voyagers I remember, who among them Did not board ship with grief among their maps?”

Image

Other authors on Life

More by Mary Oliver

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

In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the…

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

The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn…

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

“All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers. • To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition.”

“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…

“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…

“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…

The sea is the most beautiful face in our universe.

There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow…

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

“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…

“I stood like Adam in his lonely garden On that first morning, shaken out of sleep, Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves, Like…

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I…