Mary Oliver Quotes

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

Have I been wrong? Have I been wise to shut my eyes?

The best advice I've ever received is, 'No one else knows what they're doing either.

True wisdom is a thing very extraordinary. Happy are they that have it: and next to them, not those many that think they have it, but those few that are sensible of their own defects and imperfections, and know that they have it not.

We need wisdom the most when we believe in it the least.

the more I live, the more I regret how little i know

If you believe the noises of the world, rather than the silences of your soul, you will be lost.

Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life. Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am willing to look in that mirror and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain self-knowledge-and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my subject.

There is no one who can give you wiser advice than you can give yourself: you will never make a slip, if you listen to your own heart.

Dig deep into your heart, where the answer spreads its roots in your being, and ask yourself solemnly, Must I write?

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom.

How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking?

A sage steers by the bright light of confusion and doubt.

I'm trying to grow older with wisdom.

I am very conscious that I am not wise at all.

It's a good thing I learned some humility and perspective as I got older.

The fruitfulness of our lives depends in large measure in our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility.

Be silent always when you doubt your sense.

The wise man is one who knows what he does not know.

A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.

In these simple words, Lord, is it I? lies the beginning of wisdom and the pathway to personal conversion and lasting change.

He whose book of the heart has been opened needs no other books.

Always keep your words soft and sweet. You never know when you'll have to eat them. Always remember, as you go out to seek your fortune, your fame, your fulfillment, always remember that it's not who you know in this world, it's whom.

Books are never out of humour; never envious or jealous, they answer all questions with readiness; ... they teach us how to live and how to die; they dispel melancholy by their mirth, and amuse by their wit; they prepare the soul to suffer everything and desire nothing; they introduce us to ourselves.

I was wiser at 30 than I am now. My judgment was better at 12. If you look out the windshield of a Hyundai or a Bentley, you see the same road.