147 Magnificent Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope (Beautiful)

Some of Mary Oliver’s most powerful quotes on hope and what they can teach us about finding strength and resilience.

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Best Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope
Short Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope
Mary Oliver Quotes About Navigating Life
Mary Oliver Quotes about Aging and Moving On
Life and Inspiration Quotes by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver on Love and Friendship
Mary Oliver on Writing

Best Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope

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

Ten times a day something happens to me like this—some strengthening throb of amazement, some good, sweet, empathic ping and swell. Mary Oliver

Happiness isn’t a town on a map, or an early arrival, or a job well done, but good work ongoing. Mary Oliver

Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart. Mary Oliver

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world. Mary Oliver

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely, as I can too. And so, no doubt can you, and you. 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. Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it…It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty
Let the path become where I choose to walk, and not otherwise established. Mary Oliver

It’s very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope

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

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We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. Mary Oliver

It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day. Mary Oliver

A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life. Mary Oliver

As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules. Sometimes, breaking the rules is just extending the rules. Sometimes, there are no rules. Mary Oliver

The resurrection of the morning. The mystery of the night. The hummingbird’s wings. The excitement of thunder. The rainbow in the waterfall. Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields. Mary Oliver

You can fool a lot of yourself, but you can’t fool the soul. Mary Oliver

I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too. Mary Oliver

Whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. Mary Oliver

Maybe it’s about the wonderful things that may happen if you break the ropes that are holding you. Mary Oliver

Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say, ‘Look!’ and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads. Mary Oliver

I’ll just leave you with this. I don’t care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s enough to know that for some people, they exist, and that they dance. Mary Oliver

Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed. Mary Oliver

Therefore, dark past, I’m about to do it. I’m about to forgive you for everything. Mary Oliver

When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included? Mary Oliver

I held my breath, as we do sometimes, to stop time when something wonderful has touched us. Mary Oliver

What’s magical sometimes has deeper roots than reason. Mary Oliver

Short Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope

The whirlwind of human behavior is not to be set aside. Mary Oliver

It is better for the heart to break, than not to break. Mary Oliver

The extraordinary is what art is about. Mary Oliver

Listen, whatever you see and love—that’s where you are. Mary Oliver

Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Mary Oliver

Always, there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude. Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope

I simply do not distinguish between work and play. Mary Oliver

You must never stop being whimsical. Mary Oliver

All eternity is in the moment. Mary Oliver

I know many lives worth living. Mary Oliver

Attention is the beginning of devotion. Mary Oliver

If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it? Mary Oliver

I walk in the world to love it. Mary Oliver

My life without you would be a place of parched and broken trees. Mary Oliver

Listen—are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? Mary Oliver

Invention hovers always a little above the rules. Mary Oliver

Be ignited, or be gone. Mary Oliver

We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it. Mary Oliver

There is only one question—how to love this world. Mary Oliver

Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives. Mary Oliver

Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. Mary Oliver

There are as many worlds as there are imagineers. Mary Oliver

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable. Mary Oliver

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us. Mary Oliver

The patterns of our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us. Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes About Navigating Life

Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead. Mary Oliver

This is the first, the wildest, and the wisest thing I know—that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness. Mary Oliver

Said the river, ‘Imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.’ Mary Oliver

With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them. Mary Oliver

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? 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

May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe—tiny but useful. 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

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. Mary Oliver

And now I understand something so frightening & wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar. Mary Oliver

Now, I am learning to rise above all that, learning the thin life, waking up simply to praise everything in this world that is strong and beautiful always. Mary Oliver

The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves—we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny. Mary Oliver

Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled— to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. Mary Oliver

We are not wise, and not very often kind; and much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Mary Oliver

If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like. Mary Oliver

I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do. Mary Oliver

Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing, and gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang. Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope

You must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life. Mary Oliver

What I mean by spirituality is not theology, but attitude. Mary Oliver

For some things, there are no wrong seasons—which is what I dream of for me. Mary Oliver

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. Mary Oliver

In the beginning, I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it. Before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be. Mary Oliver

Knowledge has entertained me and it has shaped me and it has failed me. Something in me still starves. Mary Oliver

The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own. Mary Oliver

This isn’t a playground. This is earth, our heaven for a while. Mary Oliver

I have given precedence to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods that hold you in the center of my world. And I say to my body, grow thinner still. And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song. And I say to my heart, rave on. Mary Oliver

And that I did not give to anyone the responsibility for my life. It is mine. I made it. And can do what I want to with it. Give it back, someday, without bitterness, to the wild and weedy dunes. Mary Oliver

I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything – other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned – that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion. Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—equal seekers of sweetness. Mary Oliver

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things. Mary Oliver

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

There are things you can’t reach, but you can reach out to them, and all day long. Mary Oliver

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. Mary Oliver

I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can’t really call being alive. Mary Oliver

Here is an amazement—once, I was twenty years old and in every motion of my body, there was a delicious ease; and in every motion of the green earth, there was a hint of paradise. And now I am sixty years old, and it is the same. Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes about Aging and Moving On

When death comes, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering—what it’s going to be like, that cottage of darkness? Mary Oliver

I too have known loneliness. I too have known what it is to feel misunderstood, rejected, and suddenly not at all beautiful. Oh, mother earth, your comfort is great, your arms never withhold. It has saved my life to know this. Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning. Oh, motions of tenderness! Mary Oliver

Maybe death isn’t darkness after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us. Mary Oliver

Then I remember—death comes before the rolling away of the stone.
What misery to be afraid of death. What wretchedness to believe only in what can be proven. Mary Oliver

When it’s over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope

That time, I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying. I went closer, and I did not die. Mary Oliver

Life and Inspiration Quotes by Mary Oliver

But literature, the best of it, does not aim to be literature. It wants and strives, beyond that artifact part of itself, to be a true part of the composite human record—that is, not words but a reality. Mary Oliver

All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers. To understand many things, you must reach out of your own condition. Mary Oliver

Even the most solitudinous of us is communal by habit, and indeed by commitment to the bravest of our dreams, which is to make a moral world. Mary Oliver

I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It’s impossible not to remember wild and want it back. Mary Oliver

I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility. Mary Oliver

Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness. Mary Oliver

And that is just the point—how the world, moist and beautiful, calls 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

I would say that there exists a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope

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

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. Mary Oliver

If I had another life, I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness. 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

Come with me into the woods where spring is advancing, as it does, no matter what, not being singular or particular, but one of the forever gifts, and certainly visible. Mary Oliver

I have a little dog who likes to nap with me. He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck. He is sweeter than soap. He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace, which can’t even bark… Mary Oliver

And did you feel it in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life? Mary Oliver

Three things to remember: As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules. Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules. Sometimes there are no rules. Mary Oliver

It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning, in this broken world. Mary Oliver

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed. Mary Oliver

The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. Mary Oliver

I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things. Mary Oliver

Sing if you can sing, and if not, still be musical inside yourself. Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields. Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness. Mary Oliver

What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs? Mary Oliver

And to tell the truth, I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness. I don’t want to sell my life for money. I don’t even want to come in out of the rain. Mary Oliver

Dawn is a gift. Much is revealed about a person about his or her passion, or indifference, to this opening of the door of day. No one who loves dawn, and is abroad to see it, could be a stranger to me. Mary Oliver

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. Mary Oliver

But I also say this—that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it’s done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive. Mary Oliver

This is to say nothing against afternoons, evenings, or even midnight. Each has its portion of the spectacular. Mary Oliver

How could there be a day in your whole life that doesn’t have its splash of happiness? Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver on Love and Friendship

From the complications of loving you, I think there is no end or return. No answer, no coming out of it. Which is the only way to love, isn’t it? Mary Oliver

Love, love, love, says Percy. And hurry as fast as you can along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust. Then, go to sleep. Give up your body heat, your beating heart. Then, trust. Mary Oliver

Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing—the reason they can fly. Mary Oliver

So, be slow if you must, but let the heart still play its true part. Love still as once you loved, deeply and without patience. Mary Oliver

My life without you would be a place of parched and broken trees. Mary Oliver Quotes on Hope

There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled. Like telling someone you love them, or giving your money away—all of it. Mary Oliver

Your heart is beating, isn’t it? You’re not in chains, are you? There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even possibly, your own. Mary Oliver

Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving. Mary Oliver

You have broken my heart. Just as well. Now, I am learning to rise above all that, learning the thin life. Mary Oliver

So it is, if the heart devotes itself to love, there is not a single inch of emptiness. Mary Oliver

Also, I wanted to be able to love, and we all know how that one goes, don’t we? Mary Oliver

In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us. Mary Oliver

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier? Mary Oliver

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things—to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go. Mary Oliver

So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you. Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Mary Oliver

This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity. Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver on Writing

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. 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. Yes indeed. Mary Oliver

He is exactly the poem I wanted to write. Mary Oliver

Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. 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

The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building. Mary Oliver

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 Quotes on Hope

Summary

Mary Oliver was an American poet known for her contemplative and lyrical works that often centered around nature and the natural world. Born in 1935 in Ohio, Oliver grew up in a tumultuous household, with a father who was abusive and an absent mother. Despite the challenges she faced in her childhood, Oliver found solace in the outdoors, often spending hours alone in the woods and fields around her home.

Oliver published her first collection of poetry, “No Voyage and Other Poems,” in 1963, but it was her fourth collection, “American Primitive,” published in 1983, that brought her widespread acclaim. The collection won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and established Oliver as one of the most important voices in American poetry.

Throughout her career, Oliver continued to explore themes of nature, spirituality, and the human condition. She often drew inspiration from her observations of the natural world, and her works reflected a deep reverence for the beauty and complexity of the natural world. Her poetry was also marked by a deep sense of spirituality, with many of her works exploring themes of faith, grace, and transcendence.

Despite her success as a poet, Oliver remained deeply private throughout her life. She lived in a small town in Massachusetts with her partner, photographer Molly Malone Cook, and was known for her reclusive nature. Oliver was also famously protective of her work, rarely giving interviews or sharing insights into her creative process.

Oliver passed away in 2019 at the age of 83, leaving behind a rich legacy of works that continue to inspire and captivate readers around the world. Her poetry is celebrated for its clarity and simplicity, and for its ability to evoke a sense of wonder and awe in readers. In a world that can often feel chaotic and overwhelming, Oliver’s works offer a reminder of the beauty and grace that can be found in even the smallest moments of life.

Overall, Mary Oliver was a poet of great depth and sensitivity, whose works continue to resonate with readers today. Her poems offer a powerful reminder of the importance of connecting with the natural world, and of finding meaning and purpose in even the most difficult of circumstances.

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