Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
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
Earth
Regretful
Work
Uprising
Time
Neither
People
Gave
Creative
Call
Felt
Power
More quotes by Mary Oliver
Belief isn't always easy. But this much I have learned--- if not enough else--- to live with my eyes open.
Mary Oliver
And over one more set of hills, along the sea, the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness and are giving it back to the world. If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness.
Mary Oliver
Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket you put your life into it and make something out of that.
Mary Oliver
A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
Mary Oliver
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
Mary Oliver
Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.
Mary Oliver
Sunrise What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire.
Mary Oliver
Everybody has to have their little tooth of power. Everybody wants to be able to bite.
Mary Oliver
For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
Mary Oliver
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
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
There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.
Mary Oliver
Every word is a messenger. Some have wings some are filled with fire some are filled with death.
Mary Oliver
How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of attention, his wings pure light
Mary Oliver
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
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
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
Mary Oliver
This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention.
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
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Mary Oliver
