653 Quotes by Mary Oliver

What we must do, I suppose, is to hope the world keeps its balance; what we are to do, however, with our hearts waiting and watching-truly I do not know.

My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird – equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums...

It is supposed that a writer writes what he knows about and knows well. It is not necessarily so. A writer’s subject may just as well, if not more likely, be what the writer longs for and dreams about, in an unquenchable dream, in lush detail and harsh honesty.

Or maybe it’s about the wonderful things that may happen if you break the ropes that are holding you.

Things take the time they take. don’t worry. How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?

Attention without feeling – is only a report.

Oh, I would like to live in an empty house, with vines for walls, and a carpet of grass. No planks, no plastic, no fiberglass.

Over and over in the butterfly we see the idea of transcendence. In the forest we see not the inert but the aspiring. In water that departs forever and forever returns, we experience eternity.

Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.