Mary Oliver is famous for her poetry, and her poems are often short, simple, and beautiful, but they manage to pack and evoke strong feelings and emotions from readers and critics. So, here’re the best Mary Oliver quotes.
What is Mary Oliver best known for?
Mary Oliver is an American poet who has received several accolades for her work, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
☑ Mary Oliver is best known for her poems about the natural world, which often explore the relationship between humans and nature.
In addition, Mary Oliver’s work has often received praise for its simplicity and beauty, and she is considered one of the most important contemporary poets.
What is Mary Oliver’s most famous poem?
Mary Oliver is a phenomenal poet with so many amazing poems. Some of her famous poems include but are not limited to “Wild Geese,” “The Summer Day,” “When Death Comes,” “The Journey,” “Watering the Stones,” “The Swan,” etc.
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What Is Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese Poem About?
The “Wild Geese” poem by Mary Oliver is about exuberant freedom, especially from the burdens and struggles of daily life, which the poem implies can come from recognizing nature’s beauty.
The poet insists that regardless of how desperate or lonely people get, they can always listen to the exciting and harsh cries of the wild geese.
The freedom embodied by the wild geese is refreshing and should help people feel more at ease with their lives and enjoy the beauty of life.
Which Mary Oliver book has Wild Geese?
“Wild Geese” first appeared in Dream Work (1986).
This collection is considered one of Oliver’s most important works and helped solidify her reputation as one of America’s leading poets.
“Wild Geese” is also her most anthologized poem. She explores connections between nature, specifically the wild geese and the human mind, in the poem.
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What Is Mary Oliver’s Poem “The Journey” About?
The poem is about taking control of one’s life and not focusing on negative influences that may derail one from their goals. Despite setbacks and challenges, the speaker in the poem remains focused on their destination.
Their destination is a metaphor for success.
The poem reminds readers that it is always worth it to keep moving forward, even when the road is difficult. Dreams are worth fighting for, and Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” encourages readers to never give up on theirs.
What is the best Mary Oliver book to start with?
Devotions is a timeless collection of over 200 poems specifically curated and arranged by Mary Oliver herself and showcases the best poems from the poet.
The book provides the readers with an invaluable and extraordinary collection of the poet’s perceptive, much-treasured, and passionate observations of the natural world.
Devotion shows the poet turning from grief and a “vast incredible gift” from nature as she praises the complexity and beauty around her, reminding us of the interconnectedness of life.
Best Mary Oliver Quotes
"What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn’t come easy."
List of other famous quotes by Mary Oliver.
- Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
- Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
- 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.
- The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention.
- Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it.
- We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story.
- Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.
- The world has need of dreamers as well as shoemakers.
- 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.
- I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.
List of Top Mary Oliver Quotes – Table of Content
11
It may not be the best we could hope or wish for, but there is and will be room for improvement and redemption if warranted.
As we go through life, we will make mistakes along the way, whether in how we deal with other people or situations. As a result, we will make bad decisions and hurt people and even ourselves.
☑ And unfortunately, there will be instances when we cannot fix the results of those bad choices or be able to redeem some of our relationships.
But still, we must remain hopeful and faithful for a better future as long as we are alive; there is room for reflection and atonement. Therefore we must make amends with what we can and make peace with what we cannot.
12
The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees, to learn something by being nothing.
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So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.
14
Listen – are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
15
And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.
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You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
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I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.
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And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.
20
I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things.
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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.
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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.
24
You must be able to do three things, to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
25
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?
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I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.
28
Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation.
29
Don’t we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life.
30
And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also.
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There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even, possibly, your own.
33
All my life I have been restless – I have felt there is something more wonderful than gloss – than wholeness – than staying at home.
34
Life is much the same when it’s going well – resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster’s seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?
35
There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you’re working a few hours a day and you’ve got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you’re okay.
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There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled. Like, telling someone you love them. Or giving your money away, all of it. Your heart is beating, isn’t it? You’re not in chains, are you?
38
Love, love, love, says Percy. And hurry as fast as you can along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust. Then, go to sleep. Give up your body heat, your beating heart. Then, trust.
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So, be slow if you must, but let the heart still play its true part. Love still as once you loved, deeply and without patience.
40
I have my stories of that grief. No doubt, many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old—or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young.
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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 desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
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Also I wanted to be able to love. And we all know how that one goes, don’t we? Slowly.
44
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
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Dawn is a gift. Much is revealed about a person about his or her passion, or indifference, to this opening of the door of day. No one who loves dawn, and is abroad to see it, could be a stranger to me.
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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.
48
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.
49
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.
50
I am so glad to be alive, I am so glad to be loving and loved. Even if I were close to the finish, even if I were at my final breath, I would be here to take a stand, bereft of such astonishments, but for them.
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From the complications of loving you, I think there is no end or return. No answer, no coming out of it. Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
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In this universe, we are given two gifts—the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.
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Much is revealed about a person about his or her passion, or indifference, to this opening of the door of day. No one who loves dawn, and is abroad to see it, could be a stranger to me.
55
I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.
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The world is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is the multiform utterly obedient to a mystery.
59
I think this is the prettiest world – so long as you don’t mind a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?
60
The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they’re full of bicycle trails.
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Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone. When I’m alone I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.
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It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.
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Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away. Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.
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I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.
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The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on the hunt is the world in which I live too. There is only one world.
67
Life is not forever. It is the only thing we can be sure of in our mortality.
When we realize that our life will end someday, we should use this fact as a stepping stone to do the things that make us feel alive and real.
☑ We don’t want to be on our deathbeds regretting what we didn’t do, not saying what we should’ve said, and living the life we should’ve lived.
For instance, have you always wanted to open your own business? Then do it. Do you tell your loved ones how much you love them? Tell them today. Have you ever wanted to travel to a different country? Pack your suitcase and go.
When it is all over, and we’ve lived our life the way we wanted, we will not wonder what could’ve been because we lived it wholeheartedly, and our life was full of authentic experiences that made a living so much worth it.
68
This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity.
69
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
70
To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
71
Here is an amazement – once I was twenty years old and in every motion of my body there was a delicious ease, and in every motion of the green earth there was a hint of paradise, and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.
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Try to find the right place for yourself. If you can’t find it, at least dream of it.
75
I think, in my whole life, I have never missed the full moon.
76
You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it.
77
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.
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Writing is neither vibrant life nor docile artifact but a text that would put all its money on the hope of suggestion.
80
I read my books with diligence, and mounting skill, and gathering certainty. I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life.
81
This is to say nothing against afternoons, evenings or even midnight. Each has its portion of the spectacular. But dawn – dawn is a gift.
82
No poet ever wrote a poem to dishonor life, to compromise high ideals, to scorn religious views, to demean hope or gratitude, to argue against tenderness, to place rancor before love, or to praise littleness of soul. Not one. Not ever.
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Because there is no substitute for vigorous and exact description, I would like to say how your eyes, at twilight, reflect, at the same time, the beauty of the world, and its crimes.
85
In creative work – creative work of all kinds – those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward.
86
There are lots of ways to dance and to spin, sometimes it just starts my feet first then my entire body, I am spinning no one can see it but it is happening.
87
I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can’t really call being alive.
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Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
90
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.
91
My life without you would be a place of parched and broken trees.
92
There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier?
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And now you’ll be telling stories of my coming back and they won’t be false, and they won’t be true, but they’ll be real.
95
What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?
96
As long as you’re dancing, you can Break the rules. Sometimes breaking the rules is just Extending the rules. Sometimes there are no rules.
97
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
Famous Mary Oliver Quotes And Sayings About Nature, Life , And Love To Live By
Sometimes, we may feel that what we’re currently experiencing and have is all there is to life. But, with a more open heart and mind, life may surprise us.
☑ Let’s be more open to possibilities.
Was there ever a time when we felt distressed and hopeless amidst life’s trials?
Were there times when we thought nothing would change and accepted life as it was? But suddenly, something or someone comes out of the blue and changes what we thought was a hopeless situation into a celebratory mood.
☑ Believe and keep our hearts open for it.
People would say, “what an unexpected happening or what a surprise!”
But isn’t that part of life’s mysteries?
So whatever our life may be at this point, have faith and hope that this may not be the whole end of it. Something tremendous and better may be in store for us.
Always believe. That concludes the most famous Mary Oliver quotes to motivate us!