Skip to content

Attention Quotes by Mary Oliver

15 Attention quotes by Mary Oliver

All Attention quotes Mary Oliver’s page

Mary Oliver’s poems often begin with a single glance, and here she expands that moment into fifteen gentle reminders to stay present. Her language is rooted in nature, urging us to notice the small miracles that slip past hurried eyes. The collection feels like a walk through a quiet garden of awareness.

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

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention.

Image

Attention without feeling--is only a report.

Image

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

Image

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

Image

“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell others.”

Image

I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all.

Image

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

Image

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

Image

This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of…

Image

It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just…

Image

The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. I don't say this without reckoning in the sorrow, the…

Image

“A Thousand Mornings All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until…

Image

How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and…

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

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass,…

Image

Other authors on Attention

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.

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

“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…

Image

“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…

Image

“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…

Image

The sea is the most beautiful face in our universe.

Image

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

Image

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

Image

“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…

Image

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

Image

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

Image