Mary Oliver Life Quotations

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?

Who do you want to be in your one wild and precious life?

I know many lives worth living.

What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?

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

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention...

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?

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.

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. When it is over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

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

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.

And I say to my heart: rave on.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.