Mary Oliver Quotes

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

It's taken me a long time to realize that my own life is far more interesting than any part I'll ever play.

Everybody has to know for themselves what they're capable of.

In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

The world can't tell you who you are. You've just got to figure out who you are and be there, for better or worse.

Dream and give yourself permission to envision a You that you choose to be.

You have to find it. No one else can find it for you.

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

Before you can follow your own drummer, you have to hear the drummer.

The only thing new is you finding out about something. Like nothing's really new, but you reinvent it for yourself and find your inner voice.

You've got one life: find your voice within it.

The word 'empower' is something that kept coming up in my heart.

'The Wizard of Oz' is my favourite. It explains what life on this planet is about. Although Dorothy reaches Oz, she finds she had what she needed to go back to Kansas all along, but the Good Witch tells her that she had to learn it for herself. All of the answers to the meaning of life are there.

I just keep surprising myself, I guess.

When you find your voice, your life takes on grace.

You are your own devil, you are your own God, You fashioned the paths that your footsteps have trod, And no one can save you from error or sin, Until you shall hark to the Spirit within.

How could I choose someone who would force me to give up my own small reach for meaning? I chose myself, and without consolation.

Nobody can build the bridge for you to walk across the river of life, no one but you yourself alone. There are, to be sure, countless paths and bridges and demi-gods which would carry you across this river; but only at the cost of yourself; you would pawn yourself and lose. There is in the world only one way, on which nobody can go, except you: where does it lead? Do not ask, go along with it.

Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.

No one can tell you who you are and what you are made of, only you yourself know what you are made of, and only you yourself can do the work to become who you want to be.

...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

Figure out whether or not you believe in yourself, and if you don't, find a way to. Because even more than you want it, you must believe it. And learn about yourself. The rhythm of one's spirit is just as important as what you look like or what you sound like. Who are you? What's your voice? What are you dying to contribute?

Ultimately, we are not seeking others to bow to, but to reinforce our individual natures, to help us suffer our own choices, to guide us on our own particular journeys.

If, on the other hand, you listen to your own inner voice, to your own inner wisdom, which is far greater than anyone else's as far as you are concerned, you will not go wrong, and you will know what to do with your life. Then time is no longer relevant.