Top 380 Mary Oliver Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “In the glare of your mind, be modest. And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.”

— Mary Oliver

102. “Poetry is a life-cherishing force.”

— Mary Oliver

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

— Mary Oliver

104. “I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write.”

— Mary Oliver

105. “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.”

— Mary Oliver

106. “More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing – the reason they can fly.”

— Mary Oliver

107. “This is the lesson of age – events pass, things change, trauma fades, good fortune rises, fades, rises again but different.”

— Mary Oliver

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

— Mary Oliver

109. “What misery to be afraid of death. What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.”

— Mary Oliver

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

— Mary Oliver

111. “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.”

— Mary Oliver

112. “It’s not a competition, it’s a doorway.”

— Mary Oliver

113. “All things are meltable, and replaceable. Not at this moment, but soon enough, we are lambs and we are leaves, and we are stars, and the shining, mysterious pond water itself.”

— Mary Oliver

114. “And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.”

— Mary Oliver

115. “Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.”

— Mary Oliver

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

— Mary Oliver

117. “Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising.”

— Mary Oliver

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

— Mary Oliver

119. “Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word. I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.”

— Mary Oliver

120. “Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.”

— Mary Oliver

121. “If you notice anything, it leads you to notice more and more.”

— Mary Oliver

122. “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”

— Mary Oliver

123. “In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.”

— Mary Oliver

124. “When When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know any of us, what happens then. So I try not to miss anything. I think, in my whole life, I have never missed The full moon or the slipper of its coming back. Or, a kiss. Well, yes, especially a kiss.”

— Mary Oliver

125. “What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?”

— Mary Oliver

126. “What we must do, I suppose, is to hope the world keeps its balance; what we are to do, however, with our hearts waiting and watching-truly I do not know.”

— Mary Oliver

127. “The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.”

— Mary Oliver

128. “If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not together.”

— Mary Oliver

129. “The sea isn’t a place but a fact, and a mystery...”

— Mary Oliver

130. “He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.”

— Mary Oliver

131. “As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules.”

— Mary Oliver

132. “Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When it does, it grows sweeter.”

— Mary Oliver

133. “Oh, yesterday, that one, we all cry out. Oh, that one! How rich and possible everything was! How ripe, ready, lavish, and filled with excitement – how hopeful we were on those summer days, under the clean, white racing clouds. Oh, yesterday!”

— Mary Oliver

134. “Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing – the reason they can fly.”

— Mary Oliver

135. “The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird, the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And on and on. It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.”

— Mary Oliver

136. “Understand from the first this certainty. Butterflies don’t write books, neither do lilies or violets. Which doesn’t mean they don’t know, in their own way, what they are. That they don’t know they are alive – that they don’t feel, that action upon which all consciousness sits, lightly or heavily. Humility is the prize of the leaf-world. Vainglory is the bane of us, the humans.”

— Mary Oliver

137. “I climb, I backtrack. I float. I ramble my way home.”

— Mary Oliver

138. “Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.”

— Mary Oliver

139. “Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.”

— Mary Oliver

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

— Mary Oliver

141. “Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.”

— Mary Oliver

142. “But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?”

— Mary Oliver

143. “Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.”

— Mary Oliver

144. “We can know a lot. And still, no doubt, there are rash and wonderful ideas brewing somewhere; there are many surprises yet to come.”

— Mary Oliver

145. “My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird – equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums...”

— Mary Oliver

146. “Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?”

— Mary Oliver

147. “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.”

— Mary Oliver

148. “There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even, possibly, your own.”

— Mary Oliver

149. “You may not agree, you may not care, but if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world – and there are plenty – very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes.”

— Mary Oliver

150. “The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.”

— Mary Oliver