Mary Oliver Quotes

Beauty can inspire miracles.

A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?

Beauty does not linger; it only visits. Yet beauty's visitation affects us and invites us into its rhythm; it calls us to feel, think and act beautifully in the world: to create and live a life that awakens the Beautiful. A life without delight is only half a life.

Beauty awakens the soul to act.

I want to become successful and represent a different form of beauty in my generation.

Whenever I see grace, I’m moved.

All my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded.

The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning.

It is part and parcel of every man's life to develop beauty in himself. All perfect things have in them an element of beauty.

Hey,' he said. It came out hard and frustrated. 'I told you to smile because you're pretty when you smile.' She walked to the bottom of the steps, then looked back at him. 'It'd be better if you thought I was pretty when I don't.

Personal beauty is then first charming and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it suggests gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions; when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset.

I think beauty is an expression of love.

When women cease to be handsome, they study to be good.

I tried to be a better person for her– but it was to impress her, to get her to want me. But when I’m around you, I want to be better because… well, because it feels right. Because I want to. You make me want to become something greater than myself. I want to excel. You inspire me in every act, every word, every glance. I look at you, and you’re like… like light made into flesh. […] You have no clue how beautiful you are or how brightly you shine.

There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty-unless she is wed to something more meaningful-is always superficial

Real beauty is my aim.

I am inspired by so much. I am inspired by women, of course - beautiful women. I am also inspired by not so beautiful things in the world.

As a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his eyes, which is its natural route to the soul; arriving there and setting him all aflutter, it waters the passages of the feathers and causes the wings to grow, and fills the soul of the loved one in his turn with love.

O, Youth: Do you know that yours is not the first generation to yearn for a life full of beauty and freedom?

Each time I read a book, I cataloged the parts that struck me dumb with envy and admiration for their beauty and power and truth.

Vulnerability is beautiful to me. There might be a need to fabricate your own beauty paradigms. I guess I never quite bought into any kind of 'standard'.

Nothing keeps me in such awe as perfect beauty; now, there is something consoling and encouraging in ugliness.

But maybe if we are surrounded in beauty Someday we will become what we see

Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly.