Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Mary Oliver
Age: 83 †
Born: 1935
Born: September 10
Died: 2019
Died: January 17
Climate Activist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Maple Heights
Ohio
Mary Jane Oliver
Inspirational
Tell
Precious
Life
Planning
Wild
Plan
Plans
Teacher
Inspiration
More quotes by Mary Oliver
Also I wanted to be able to love And we all know how that one goes, don't we? Slowly
Mary Oliver
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.
Mary Oliver
You may not agree, you may not care, but if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world — and there are plenty — very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes.
Mary Oliver
It's not a competition, it's a doorway.
Mary Oliver
The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention.
Mary Oliver
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.
Mary Oliver
Drive down any road, take a train or an airplane across the world, leave your old life behind, die and be born again~ wherever you arrive they'll be there first, glossy and rowdy and indistinguishable. The deep muscle of the world.
Mary Oliver
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver
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?
Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.
Mary Oliver
On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?
Mary Oliver
My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast there the blue plums.
Mary Oliver
People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.
Mary Oliver
Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?
Mary Oliver
If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.
Mary Oliver
Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.
Mary Oliver
You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Mary Oliver
Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver
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.
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
