27 Mary Oliver Quotes To Inspire A Bold Life

Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize winner and America's best-selling poet. Her poems take your breath away and dare you to live a bold life. Enjoy!

“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.” ~ Mary Oliver

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ~ Mary Oliver

“Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.” ~ Mary Oliver

“Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.” ~ Mary Oliver

“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.” ~ Mary Oliver

“Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.” ~ Mary Oliver

“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.” ~ Mary Oliver

“Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.” ~ Mary Oliver

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

“And now I understand something so frightening & wonderful-how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.” ~ Mary Oliver

“I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.” ~ Mary Oliver

“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

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

“it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.” ~ Mary Oliver

“Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?” ~ Mary Oliver

“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.” ~ Mary Oliver

“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.” ~ Mary Oliver

“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.” ~ Mary Oliver

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.” ~ Mary Oliver

“Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.” ~ Mary Oliver

“I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us…” ~ Mary Oliver

“maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us–” ~ Mary Oliver

“And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?” ~ Mary Oliver

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.” ~ Mary Oliver

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.” ~ Mary Oliver

“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.” ~ Mary Oliver

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