Mary Oliver quote: "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, to let it go"

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it again...
MARY OLIVER

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles thro...
MARY OLIVER

The Uses Of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved on...
MARY OLIVER

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, w...
MARY OLIVER

Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
MARY OLIVER

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

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing throug...
MARY OLIVER

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, bu...
MARY OLIVER

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
MARY OLIVER

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept s...
MARY OLIVER

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it again...
MARY OLIVER

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegr...
MARY OLIVER

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roug...
MARY OLIVER

Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilder...
MARY OLIVER

Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least ...
MARY OLIVER

Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they're thirsty. That's prayer. ...
MARY OLIVER

So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
MARY OLIVER

The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gon...
MARY OLIVER

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

I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a c...
MARY OLIVER

I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up wit...
MARY OLIVER

As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world wit...
MARY OLIVER

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility ...
MARY OLIVER

Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious.
MARY OLIVER

Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life i...
MARY OLIVER

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
thou...
MARY OLIVER

Love Sorrow

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has...
MARY OLIVER

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

Always there is something worth saying
about glory, about gratitude.
MARY OLIVER

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, ...
MARY OLIVER

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.
MARY OLIVER

My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here ...
MARY OLIVER

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing, MARY OLIVER

the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which...
MARY OLIVER

When

When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know
any of us, what happens th...
MARY OLIVER

MARY OLIVER

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
MARY OLIVER

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
...
MARY OLIVER

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
MARY OLIVER

Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
MARY OLIVER

I simply do not distinguish between work and play.
MARY OLIVER

There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day ...
MARY OLIVER

My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work...
MARY OLIVER

There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as...
MARY OLIVER

Sometimes breaking the rules is extending the rules.
MARY OLIVER

I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involu...
MARY OLIVER

To tell you the truth, I believe everything - tigers, trees, stones - are sentient in one way or ano...
MARY OLIVER

I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and neve...
MARY OLIVER

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily...
MARY OLIVER

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling MARY OLIVER

from the complications of loving you i think there is no end or return. no answer, no coming out of ...
MARY OLIVER

So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,
one...
MARY OLIVER

Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some goo...
MARY OLIVER

There are things you can’t reach. But
You can reach out to them, and all day long.

MARY OLIVER

We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, al...
MARY OLIVER

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shorew...
MARY OLIVER

When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself include...
MARY OLIVER

The poet dreams of the classroom

I dreamed
I stood up in class
And I said aloud...
MARY OLIVER

You may not agree, you may not care, but
if you are holding this book you should know that of a...
MARY OLIVER

I do not live happily or comfortably
With the cleverness of our times.
The talk is all abo...
MARY OLIVER

I want to write something
so simply
about love
or about pain
that even
...
MARY OLIVER

What misery to be afraid of death.
What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.
MARY OLIVER

But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done ri...
MARY OLIVER

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lo...
MARY OLIVER

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

Love yourself. Then forget it.
Then, love the world.
MARY OLIVER

You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know w...
MARY OLIVER

Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.
MARY OLIVER

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, ho...
MARY OLIVER

Wasn't it Emerson who said, 'My life is for itself and not for a spectacle'? I have a ha...
MARY OLIVER

To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.
MARY OLIVER

Percy wakes me (fourteen)

Percy wakes me and I am not ready.
He has slept all night ...
MARY OLIVER

The sweetness of dogs (fifteen)

What do you say, Percy? I am thinking
of sitting ou...
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...
MARY OLIVER

LITTLE DOGS RHAPSODY IN THE NIGHT
(PERCY THREE)

He puts his cheek against mine
...
MARY OLIVER

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the...
MARY OLIVER

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes...
MARY OLIVER

It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.
MARY OLIVER

I Go Down To The Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on...
MARY OLIVER

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of live...
MARY OLIVER

And now you'll be telling stories
of my coming back
and they won't be false, and they won'...
MARY OLIVER

New and Selected Poems: Volume Two
MARY OLIVER

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work
MARY OLIVER

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom,...
MARY OLIVER

Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?
MARY OLIVER

What can we dobut keep on breathing in and out,modest and willing, and in our places?
MARY OLIVER

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I wen...
MARY OLIVER

I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social work...
MARY OLIVER

But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which ...
MARY OLIVER

I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not givi...
MARY OLIVER

West Wind #2

You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begi...
MARY OLIVER

The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.
MARY OLIVER

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possib...
MARY OLIVER

I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day.
MARY OLIVER

Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not bei...
MARY OLIVER

If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the w...
MARY OLIVER

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who made the morning
...
MARY OLIVER

After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.
MARY OLIVER

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. W...
MARY OLIVER

Pretty Song"

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return....
MARY OLIVER

The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me a box fu...
MARY OLIVER

And who do you
think you are sauntering along
five feet up in the air, the ocean a blue f...
MARY OLIVER

As for life,
I'm humbled,
I'm without words
sufficient to say

how it has b...
MARY OLIVER

Oh Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing towards you.
MARY OLIVER

oxygen

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its ...
MARY OLIVER

Apparently, I've been considered a recluse.
MARY OLIVER

I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going we...
MARY OLIVER

The Poet With His Face In His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes....
MARY OLIVER

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the wei...
MARY OLIVER

How I go to the woods

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
...
MARY OLIVER

I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this...
MARY OLIVER

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the b...
MARY OLIVER

The world has need of dreamers as well as shoemakers.
MARY OLIVER

You must never stop being whimsical.
MARY OLIVER

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life...
MARY OLIVER

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my li...
MARY OLIVER

It
learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be.
Say you promise to be at your ...
MARY OLIVER

And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead / children out of the fields into the ...
MARY OLIVER

In your hands

The dog, the donkey, surely they know
They are alive.
Who would ...
MARY OLIVER

You’re like a little wild thing
that was never sent to school.
MARY OLIVER

and anyway it’s just the same old story --
a few people just trying,
one way or another,...
MARY OLIVER

It is one of the perils of our so-called civilized age that we do not yet acknowledge enough, or che...
MARY OLIVER

DAISIES

It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there ...
MARY OLIVER

Now and again there's a moment,
when the heart cries aloud:
yes, I am willing to be
t...
MARY OLIVER

Does the hummingbird think he himself invented his crimson throat?
He is wiser than that, I thi...
MARY OLIVER

...to be absent from the world
and alive, again, in another...
MARY OLIVER

I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best f...
MARY OLIVER

And what has consciousness come to anyway, so far, that is better than these light-filled bodies?
MARY OLIVER

The water, that circle of shattered glass,
healed itself with a slow whisper
and lay back
MARY OLIVER

All my life
I have been restless-
I have felt there is something
more wonderful than ...
MARY OLIVER

Of course! the path to heaven
doesn't lie down in flat miles.
It's in the imagination
MARY OLIVER

When I have to die, I would like to die
on a day of rain -
long rain, slow rain, the kind ...
MARY OLIVER

Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green ...
MARY OLIVER

They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me, of which
t...
MARY OLIVER

And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire...
MARY OLIVER

When it over, I want to say:all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a brideg...
MARY OLIVER

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a b...
MARY OLIVER

At Blackwater Pond

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a...
MARY OLIVER

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

And there you are
on the shore,

fitful and thoughtful, trying
to attach them ...
MARY OLIVER

Drive down any road,

take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your o...
MARY OLIVER

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
a...
MARY OLIVER

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when...
MARY OLIVER

Also I wanted to be able to love
And we all know how that one goes, don't we?
Slowly
MARY OLIVER

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
in...
MARY OLIVER

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell ...
MARY OLIVER

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own ...
MARY OLIVER

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles thro...
MARY OLIVER

TIDES Every day the sea blue gray green lavender pulls away leaving the harbor’s dark-cobbled unde...
MARY OLIVER

Percy and Books
Percy does not like it when I read a book.
He puts his face over th...
MARY OLIVER

I don't think any responsible performer would go on stage high. If he convinced himself he is better...
OLIVER

I don't try to analyze my style now or I might lose it. Right now it's automatic and I don't want to...
OLIVER

I think some entertainers have been very irresponsible in their part in making drug use a fad among ...
OLIVER

I wouldn't say I'm happy, but I look at things in a soft way. I try to convey more personal interact...
OLIVER

My job is to entertain people by playing my music well. You shouldn't really be upset because people...
OLIVER

I like working alone. I feel freer, less constrained. I know what I have to do and I try to do it. T...
OLIVER

My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of so...
JOHN OLIVER

I challenge you, to go to any school and open 50 lunchboxes, and I guarantee you there will be one o...
JAMIE OLIVER

If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self -...
OLIVER SACKS

The moment I accept that there's an artistic, redeeming quality in puns, I have a horrible feeli...
JOHN OLIVER

I think puns are not just the lowest form of wit, but the lowest form of human behavior.
JOHN OLIVER

I've met people who will go to a movie that I can't stand and they say that they saw that mo...
OLIVER STONE

I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power.
OLIVER STONE

You do the best job you can. You take it step by step. It's hard enough to make a movie. If it w...
OLIVER STONE

In any film there's always a historical implication.
OLIVER STONE

I do believe that movies are subject to a million interpretations.
OLIVER STONE

But in answer to your question about the conspiracy angle, I think that any historian worth his salt...
OLIVER STONE

You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment ...
OLIVER STONE

It's interesting that when economic times were the hardest, that's when many people embraced...
OLIVER STONE

I never put out a history, I put out a dramatic history.
OLIVER STONE

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one...
OLIVER STONE

But I suppose film is distinctive because of its nature, of its being able to cut through time with ...
OLIVER STONE

A woman can be very beautiful and an ideal model and she will photograph incredibly well, but she...
OLIVER STONE

Anybody who's been through a divorce will tell you that at one point. they've thought murder...
OLIVER STONE

I have the right to interpretation as a dramatist. I research. It's my responsibility to find th...
OLIVER STONE

I've been to war, and it's not easy to kill. It's bloody and messy and totally horrifyin...
OLIVER STONE

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.
OLIVER STONE

Fear may very well be a caveman fear of the predator, of the giant lizard chasing them - maybe that&...
OLIVER STONE

If anything, if you can get somebody interested in something and get them excited, that's great....
OLIVER STONE

I'm terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily.
OLIVER STONE

I will come out with my interpretation. If I'm wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of...
OLIVER STONE

There's an electrical thing about movies.
OLIVER STONE

I would vote for the man who's lived life, who's done different occupations, who's been ...
OLIVER STONE

I think experience will teach you a combination of liberalism and conservatism. We have to be progre...
OLIVER STONE

I study history in order to give an interpretation.
OLIVER STONE

In general, people are afraid to acknowledge hallucinations because they immediately see them as a s...
OLIVER SACKS

I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever 'completing a life' means.
OLIVER SACKS

I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.
OLIVER SACKS

Elements and birthdays have been intertwined for me since boyhood, when I learned about atomic numbe...
OLIVER SACKS

I was always the youngest boy in my class at high school. I have retained this feeling of being the ...
OLIVER SACKS

I think hallucinations need to be discussed. There are all sorts of hallucinations, and then many so...
OLIVER SACKS

At the New York Athletic Club they serve amazing food. People go there, get healthy, and then eat th...
OLIVER REED

If the money's right, I'll do a film.
OLIVER REED

You get so weak from eating pears that you fall down, and then they come and take you away on a stre...
OLIVER REED

I don't like doing most things unless I can do them quite well.
OLIVER REED

I'm really a pacifist.
OLIVER REED

Awe and respect are two different things.
OLIVER REED

I'm not as thrilled with myself as I used to be.
OLIVER REED

What's the point of staying sober?
OLIVER REED

Raquel Welch is someone I can also live without. We've got some love scenes together and I am dr...
OLIVER REED

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,
to let it go

Copied!

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,
to let it go

Mary Oliver

Share:

Related

More Mary Oliver

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

Mary Oliver

Share:

Related

More 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,
to let it go