"it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world."
Read quote
335 likes
Quote collection
Mary Oliver quotes (page 1 of 14)
280 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?"
Read quote
259 likes
"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift."
Read quote
237 likes
"If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb."
Read quote
228 likes
"I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing."
Read quote
218 likes
"Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads. (from “Mysteries, Yes”)"
Read quote
217 likes
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
Read quote
211 likes
"Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."
Read quote
208 likes
"One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began."
Read quote
181 likes
"Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable."
Read quote
167 likes
"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."
Read quote
164 likes
"Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled-to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing-that the light is everything-that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do."
Read quote
158 likes
"In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us."
Read quote
152 likes
"Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?"
Read quote
140 likes
"I would say that there exists a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves-we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together, we are each other's destiny."
Read quote
140 likes
"I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed."
Read quote
138 likes
"You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life."
Read quote
138 likes
"Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness."
Read quote
136 likes
"I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
Read quote
128 likes
"I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us."
Read quote
120 likes