Mary Oliver
American poet whose work — rooted in long contemplative walks through the woods and dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts — became one of the most beloved bodies of contemplative literature of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Born in 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive in 1984 and the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems in 1992. Her two questions — 'What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' and 'Are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?' — have become touchstones of contemporary spiritual life. Her work blends close-watching of the natural world with a deep contemplative attention that has been compared to Rilke, Whitman, and the great wisdom traditions she rarely named.
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Quotes by Mary Oliver
109 quotes“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.”
“Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.”
“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.”
“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
“When death comes, like the hungry bear in autumn, I want to step through the door full of curiosity.”
“I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”
“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.”
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”
“Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it.”
“Mostly, I want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason.”
“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 happens 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, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty.”
“Every morning the world is created.”
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
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