Mary Oliver Quotes

To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.

Puttering is really a time to be alone, to dream, to get in touch with yourself...To putter is to discover.

From early childhood, I was interested in understanding how the world worked, and assumed I would be some kind of physical scientist or chemist. But the truth was, I didn't know there was another kind of world, the inner world, that was just as interesting, if not more relevant, than what was going on in the outside world.

But whenever I look at the question of how to live, the answer's always staring me in the face. I'm already doing it.

I love just being in the sphere of nothingness looking inwards.

If you do not go within, you without

Gaze Upward, Look Inward, Reach Outward, Press Forward.

Mind is a door that leads you outside in the world; meditation is the door that leads you to your interiority - to the very innermost shrine of your being.

We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things....but, there are times when we must stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or in its memory. We listen, and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

Strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul and look into your own heart.

It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?'...If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time-the stuff of life

Its never too late to take a moment to look.

It is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.

I never go anywhere or do anything that transports me outside the boundaries of my mind.

In the end, we need two things to lead a balanced life - a sense of the world and a sense of ourselves; it's like breathing in and breathing out. And if you can only get to know the world by stepping out, and losing yourself in experience, you can only get to know the self by stepping back, and finding yourself in contemplation. One without the other leads to a kind of madness.

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.

Don’t let a day go by without asking who you are…each time you let a new ingredient to enter your awareness.

You grow your best thoughts in silence, solitude, and meditation. When you relax and think deeply, you are giving your inmost powers their best opportunity to disclose themselves.

His retreat into himself is not a final renunciation of the world, but a search for quietude, where alone it is possible for him to make his contribution to the life of the community.

I think everybody at some point - especially if they've been working their whole lives - should take time out and think about what they've done.

I learned with 'The Beach' that I'm a bit better lower down the radar.

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.

I caught up on a lot of just domestic normal everyday stuff, and grew up a lot, and went to therapy, and did a lot of contemplating and figuring things out. I needed to just strip everything away and figure out who I am and get to know myself, as cheesy as that sounds.

My goal is to get quieter as I get older.

I love to spend a lot of time on my own. I can seriously go into my own head and often love to let myself travel where I don't know where I'm going.