21 Mary Oliver Quotes about Nature, Beauty, Devotion, and Your Place in the World (2024)

Written by Jennifer Healey

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Often called the most beloved poet in America, Mary Oliver was the first name I had in mind when I decided to read more poetry this year.Her deep sense of wonder, natural imagery, and simple language pulled me in; the solace I found in her words kept me there.

Oliver's body of work amounts to an instruction manual for how to love the world. For her, that story began with a walk in the woods.

In so much of her work, she uses nature to point to the sacred. Then she verbalizes truths you didn't know you had buried in you. And somehow, she makesyou feel more comfortable being human.

It's no wonder she's one of the most celebrated and widely read American poets.

Still—readingpoetry used to be something more people did, more often. Turns out, the poem requires more patience, sharper focus than what we're used to these days.

We're used to distractions.

We're so used to doing, we've forgotten about being.

The world seems to spin too fast for us to slow down, but slowing down is just the thing that would help us find our footing.

Like Oliver wrote, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

And this is exactlythe reason for my self-prescribed daily dose of poetry: as Oliver herself put it,“I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

(I wanted to read Oliver beyond her most popular, so I started withUpstream: Selected Essays and A Thousand Mornings.)

For today's daily dose of poetry, beauty, and devotion, here's an incomplete collection of my favorite Mary Oliver quotes for you.

Pay attention...

This moment is your life, after all.

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

2. “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” — Mary Oliver, Yes! No!

3. “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, Upstream

4. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

5. “For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” — Mary Oliver, Upstream

6. “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, Sand Dabs, Five

7. “Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.” — Mary Oliver, It Was Early

8. “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, The Uses of Sorrow

9. “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

10. “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” — Mary Oliver, West Wind

11. “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, Wild Geese

12. “Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.” — Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

13. “Most mornings I’m up to see the sun, and that rising of the light moves me very much, and I’m used to thinking and feeling in words, so it sort of just happens. I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and … almost involuntary in my life,” she says. “And when I talk about prayer, I mean really … what Rumi says in that wonderful line, ‘there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.'” — Mary Oliver

14. “Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.” — Mary Oliver, Devotions

15. “You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.” ― Mary Oliver,Upstream

16. “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, Mysteries, Yes

17. “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. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery. 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, House of Light

18. “Keep some room in your heart for the Unimaginable.” — Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

19. “Knowledge has entertained me and it has shaped me and it has failed me. Something in me still starves.”―Mary Oliver, Upstream

20. “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I 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 wonder if 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.” — Mary Oliver, When Death Comes

21. “Instructions for living a life.

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.”

― Mary Oliver, Sometimes

. . .

Tell me:

Which of these Mary Oliver quotes is your favorite right now?

Tell me in the comments. I'd love to know which you love most!

~ Jen

Comments on this post (21)

• Jul 05, 2024

  I have recently been introduced to Mary through my niece. I love her work, it all resonates with me, and I’ve read the few things my local library has. I wonder how I could find a complete list of Mary’s writings?

  — Terry

• Dec 30, 2022

  Favorite quotes of Mary Oliver in this order: (though I realize you did not include all of these above)

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

  “How I Go to the Woods” especially this last sentence…“If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.”

  “Wild Geese”

  — Glenda Harris

• Dec 09, 2022

  “Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.” I think of this when I stand in the co*ckpit of a sailboat, and dolphins come by.

  — Kathrine Dolliver

• Jan 02, 2022

  Thank you Emily!

  — Jennifer Williamson

• Jan 02, 2022

  is actually from “Upstream” a collection of her essays. It’s not in “Wild Geese” — my favorite poem.

  — Emily F Lardner

• Apr 25, 2021

  Love all her poems but # 20 for me is the best thank you for your work ♥️🌹

  — Marlene Molina

• Mar 14, 2021

  14 Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.” — Mary Oliver, Devotions

  — Melanie

• Jan 10, 2021

  Number 5
  I am blessed to live on a farm with a hundred-acre woods. To me the house is chaos, but the woods are bliss. I’ve lived here for over 30 years and every time I go to the timber I am filled with gratitude. It’s a spiritual experience. It’s where I worship.

  — Janet

• Dec 28, 2020

  I, too ,at age 83 had never heard of Mary, or really into poetry. A then dear friend introduced her to me at a low and vulnerable time via ‘Wild Geese’ which both resonated with me and moved me very much, especially the line about ‘despair’. I now see many references to her, and so sorry that I had not known of her before. I bought her most recent volume. ’ Devotions’, and have opened. myself belatedly in life, to poetry in general. Grateful to my friend, although distressed that I have been dropped as a friend. Hopefully Oliver will sustain me, in my sadness.

  — Terry Weaver

• Nov 23, 2020

  Thank you so so much for sharing these wonderful quotes, so nice to have them all together. Mary Oliver has been my constant go to time and time again since I first read her journey poem which I have come back to time and time again for past 20 years.Her words helped me find myself after a divorce and set me of on a new life’s journey. Thank you Jennifer

  — alma

• Nov 23, 2020

  No.14
  Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.” —

  (Can you send quotes with images). Tks

  — Pamela Gordon

• Sep 14, 2020

  I truly love all of them. Mary Oliver’s words have always read my mind and put my thought into words. Thank you 😊

  — Maria

• Sep 14, 2020

  I think she’s imagining what would appeal to us and putting it down for us to read and feel.

  — Shehnaz Khan

• Aug 24, 2020

  “It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.” — Mary Oliver. So appropriate in recent situation.

  — Piyali Chakraborty

• Jul 31, 2020

  is a poem I refer to often when I am lost. I fell in love with Mary in the depths of loneliness after my divorce and a corporate soap opera ending. You pulled a lot of my favorites.
  My other favorite is: I don’t want to be demure or respectable. I was that way, asleep, for years. That way, you forget too many important things.

  — Lindsay Pollock

• Jun 01, 2020

  #16, Mysteries

  But basically all of them!😷

  — Carolyn

• May 27, 2020

  16 ❤️❤️
  20… wow. My favorite

  — Matsatsi Kgaladi

• May 18, 2020

  Jen and Alli, you make me want to go outside and play too, but that was oh, so long ago. Enjoy every moment you can. That is a purposeful life.

  — Jim

• May 06, 2020

  Alli, Mary Oliver is amazing! Her writing is so simple yet so rich at the same time. Reading her words is a reminder for me that being in nature among the simple things (like those things we used to do as kids!) is good for the soul, no matter how young or old you are. It’s not an escape from real life, but it IS life in its fullest. It is joy, connection, innocence, freedom… I miss it too! I think I’ll go outside now ;)

  — Jennifer Williamson

• May 06, 2020

  “Love yourself, then forget it, then love the world” stands out as good advice. Thank you for sharing.

  — Jim

• May 06, 2020

  How have I never heard of Mary Oliver?! Love these! Being in nature has always made me feel so good. I often think about all the I spent outdoors by myself when I was younger. I loved to go out in the rain, jump in puddles, play in little streams and find clay, ride my bike, or just lay in the grass and listen. Getting up crazy early to watch meteor showers, sitting by bonfires with family, the list goes on! I miss it!

  — Alli

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