653 Quotes by 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.

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,whoever I was, I wasalive for a little while.

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

When it's over, I want to say: all my lifeI 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 wonderif 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.

It's more than bones.It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.It's more than the beating of the single heart.It's praising.It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.You have a life - just imagine that!You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another.

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

to live in this worldyou must be ableto do three thingsto love what is mortal;to hold itagainst your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it go

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.

Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.