Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet. Nature is her inspiration rather than the human world. She won National Book Award in the year 1992 and the Pulitzer award in the year 1984. She was declared as the country's best-selling poet in the year 2007. She is the best guide to life with the never giving up attitude in the natural world. She was deeply influenced by Edna St. Vincent Millay. One of her best books is Dream Work (1986) where she explained a search for understanding both the wonder and pain of nature. She was a great writer of both poetry and prose. The main themes of her books are mainly related to the interaction between humans and the natural world. The Summer Day is Oliver's well-known poem. She is best known for her clear and poignant observations with evocative use of the world. Her writings are also famous for rooting in their natural place with romantic tradition.
Below are some of the famous Mary Oliver Quotes.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
This quote means that you have given one life on earth that is precious. You need to think of the best possible ways to live this life with the best moments and people. This life entirely depends on you, and it is what you make it.
I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us.
Art is considered the most important part of living the best life. Based on art, people can live more on their own. You can escape your own time with the help of art, and you can also be unique in this world full of infinite imaginations.
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell me about it.
This perfectly written quote means that you have to live your life with great success and dreams. There are three rules for living a life, start paying attention to things and then astonishing your decisions. The last part is to tell about the things to the people to gain more support and ideas.
I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.
This beautiful quote means that Oliver doesn't want to change his natural world or the people around them, while she wants to change his perspective and the depths of her thought. She wants to find happiness in every natural world around her. If you start understanding the depth of things, you start grasping the happiness out of it.
Listen–are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
When you live your life with no dreams or hopes, you just living life because you are breathing. Only breathing is not the purpose of life. You need to live every day with full energy and happiness to fulfil the dreams or positions you want to achieve. This makes a better purpose for calling it a life.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
This quote means that Oliver wants to live her life knowing that she has taken every chance offered, and she can win the chance to be cherished by the world around her. Therefore, you need to grasp every chance in your life to blossom.
Continue reading some more Mary Oliver Quotes...
It's not a competition, it's a doorway.
You need to do your best with your time. You need to work hard to achieve everything in your life. Remember that life is not just a competition, but it also acts as a doorway that clears more paths for your successful life.
When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.
She explained about living her life with happiness and adventure. She is proud to include that her life is full of amazing experiences, she never gives up learning things, and also, this is better to be poignant. Live your life with the best adventures, experiences, and learning.
It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.
This quote explains the deep meaning. It conveys that stone feels satisfied with its intact nature in between a river or a waterfall. But water is never affected by the stone and flow by searching for a new way. You need to flow with life, not stop and decide that this is your final destination.
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
When you love someone, you stop thinking before doing anything. But these things work from both faces. When someone hurts you and leaves you in the dark phase of your life, this does not result in your time being wasted. But this acts as a learning experience for you. This darkness is exactly a gift for your coming life.
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
This quote explains self-love. You need to love yourself to live with your best attitude and to enjoy every second of your lovable life. Oliver writes that when you love yourself, you start forgetting everything and start working better for yourself. Then, love the world and find happiness in the natural world.
It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.
Every failure leads to an increased chance of winning in your next move. This is true for heartbreak also. It's better for a heart to break because it leads to explain many things to yourself, including the experiences you have to learn in your life. Heartbreak somehow leads to maturity.
Few more Mary Oliver Quotes...
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
This quote explains that you need to think of the scenario which is unimaginable by others. If your thinking ability is the same as others around you. This makes no difference in your journey of life. Make an unimaginable purpose of life and think about it consistently.
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
This quote means that if you are living with other people, you find yourself distracted or preoccupied with needless thoughts. You need to gain the ability to concentrate on good thoughts. This is peaceful and good work to do.
Joy is not made to be a crumb.
In the outside world, there is enough joy to feed and share with all. There is no end to joy in this world. Grasp the joy of every moment as much as you can.
Sing, if you can sing and if not still be musical inside yourself.
Singing makes all happy. You will be able to turn your mood jolly by singing. If you don't know how to sing, there are no issues. Always be musical from the inside. This results in enormous happiness.
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
There are some paths in everyone's life where you only need to give a few efforts to bloom your future. You have to think desperately about where you have to stand in your life with blessed nature to get higher peaks in your life.
Some more Mary Oliver Quotes...
Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
Glory and gratitude are the two things in in-person life that change the world view. If you are possessed with both of them, you are lucky enough. Every time though, of moving towards glory with the gratitude in yourself. Gratitude is one of the characteristics of famous people.
Knowledge has entertained me and it has shaped me and it has failed me. Something in me still starves.
Knowledge is eternal. This is a never-ending thing. You can be able to gain as much as you can. Knowledge of everything results in helping you out in every situation with the best possible outcomes. With the help of knowledge, if you will fail, you will rise again for sure.
Poetry is meant to be heard.
Poetry is the same as music. Both are heard. Poetry is not a loose emotion, while they are full of escape emotions. Poetry is precisely a revelation of the poet's feeling as music. It depends on readers' perspective on how they view or correlated while reading it.
