Mary Oliver Quotes

Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.

Mary Oliver

• Life
• Poetry

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Quotes to Explore

• When I went to college, I was so focused on this new experience of my life that I really just pushed down all of my fears of hell and damnation.

  

  Maggie Rowe
  • Life
  • Experience
  • College

• Frank Capra, Hollywood's Horatio Alger, lights with more cinematic know-how and zeal than any other director to convince movie audiences that American life is exactly like the 'Saturday Evening Post' covers of Norman Rockwell. 'It's A Wonderful Life,' the latest example of Capracorn, shows his art at a hysterical pitch.

  

  Manny Farber
  • Life
  • Art
  • American

• Let me tell you something - being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory.

  

  Halle Berry
  • Life
  • Love
  • Beautiful

• I know someone from growing up who is in jail right now for the rest of his life, but he was one of the sweetest people I ever knew.

  

  Mahershala Ali
  • People
  • Life
  • Up

• Because of where I come from, I never thought I'd see in my life a black candidate running for President.

  

  Samuel L. Jackson
  • Life
  • Black
  • Running

• I have a really beautiful life right now, so there is no reason to be hostile. I'm a husband, a father and a man who tries to do the right thing in life and in my work.

  

  Ice Cube
  • Life
  • Work
  • Father

• When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways - either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength. Thanks to the teachings of Buddha, I have been able to take this second way.

  

  Dalai Lama
  • Life
  • Real
  • Hope

• There must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.

  

  Sam Harris
  • People
  • Life
  • Important

• I think poetry's always a kind of faith. It is the kind that I have.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Think
  • Faith
  • Poetry

• I never worked in an office in my life.

  

  Jack Vance
  • Life
  • Never
  • My Life

• Most people figured I'd be in jail. I've been proving people wrong my whole life.

  

  Gary Sheffield
  • People
  • Life
  • Jail

• One child is never enough for a monarch.

  

  Kate Williams
  • Never
  • Child
  • Enough

• I guess I was a mom so late in life, my daughter was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

  

  Candice Bergen
  • Life
  • Mom
  • Daughter

• A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.

  

  Yevgeny Yevtushenko
  • Poetry
  • Poet
  • Anything

• Working out should be a key part of your life but not your whole life. When it is all a man could talk about, it becomes too much.

  

  Valerie Azlynn
  • Life
  • Man
  • Too Much

• The original 'Star Wars' that I was a part of really was the beginning of my working life.

  

  Harrison Ford
  • Life
  • Beginning
  • Star

• In mid-life the man wants to see how irresistible he still is to younger women. How they turn their hearts to stone and more or less commit a murder of their marriage I just don't know, but they do.

  

  Earl Warren
  • Life
  • Women
  • Man

• I did theatre all my life and then went into the film world. I then kind of segued into TV land, which is a different experience.

  

  T. J. Thyne
  • Life
  • World
  • Different

• Sanctification is the outcome and inseparable consequence of regeneration. He who is born again and made a new creature receives a new nature and a new principle and always lives a new life.

  

  J. C. Ryle
  • Life
  • Nature
  • New Life

• You came to my life with what you were bringing, made of light and bread and shadow I expected you, and Like this I need you, Like this I love you, and to those who want to hear tomorrow that which I will not tell them, let them read it here, and let them back off today because it is early for these arguments.

  

  Pablo Neruda
  • Life
  • Today
  • Light

• The world and that which, by another name, men have thought good to call Heaven (under the compass of which all things are covered), we ought to believe, in all reason, to be a divine power, eternal, immense, without beginning, and never to perish.

  

  Pliny the Elder
  • World
  • Good
  • Believe

• When you're in the National Football League, and you get this window where all eyes are on you, you can use that. You can use that platform for good.

  

  J. J. Watt
  • Good
  • Eyes
  • Football

• I'd love to get pajamas. Good, nice and warm flannel ones.

  

  Charlize Theron
  • Good
  • Nice

• Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.

  

  Mary Oliver
  • Life
  • Poetry