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Inspirational Quotes by Mary Oliver

38 Inspirational quotes by Mary Oliver

All Inspirational quotes Mary Oliver’s page

Mary Oliver believes that a broken heart can be better than never feeling at all. She talks about daily amazement that makes the world feel moist and beautiful, urging us to respond with wonder. She also says that even if we cannot sing perfectly, we can still make music inside ourselves.

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Things take the time they take. Don't worry.

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You must not ever stop being whimsical.

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My work is loving the world.

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

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One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began…

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

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Attention without feeling--is only a report.

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Music: what so many sentences aspire to be.

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

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

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Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives.

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

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What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy.

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

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

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You never know / What opportunity / Is going to travel to you, / Or through you.

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I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable…

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“Of course I am thinking the Lord was once young and will never in fact be old. And who else could this…

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Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who…

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You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the…

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

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

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I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to…

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

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And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and…

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Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping…

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“Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me" Last night the rain spoke to me slowly, saying, what joy to come falling out…

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“No, I mean really listen. Here's a story, and you don't have to visit many houses to find it. One person is…

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“Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always — these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel…

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Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine

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All eternity is in the moment.

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I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.

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

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

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I got saved by poetry and I got saved by the beauty of the world.

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

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Every day I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective.

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If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.

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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…