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“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
“You don't have to be good.”
“It is not your work to make anything happen. It is your work to be present.”
“What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable.”
“Of course! the path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it.”
“Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.”
“Don't bother me. I've just been born.”
“And every life, mine and yours, is a precious gift, given with no condition.”
“Trust your soul.”
“To live in this world you must be able to love what is mortal.”
“And, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
“Each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly.”
“And listen — silence is also full of speeches.”
“Even now I sometimes wonder where my real self might be.”
“How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout lilies are satisfied.”
“And what does this look like — what is the moment? It is what is in front of you.”
“Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function.”
“It must be a gift to be born with the strange ability to make things up.”
“Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.”
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