To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
Meaning of the quote
This quote by Mary Oliver, a famous American poet, is telling us that to live a good life, we need to do three important things. First, we need to love and care about the things in the world that are temporary or will not last forever. Second, we need to hold these things close to us and remember that our own lives depend on them. Finally, when the time comes to let go of these things, we need to be able to do so without clinging to them. This quote is encouraging us to appreciate and value the temporary things in our lives, while also being able to accept when we need to move on from them.
About Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver was an acclaimed American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her poetry was inspired by nature and her lifelong habit of solitary walks, and it was characterized by sincere wonderment and profound connection with the environment. In 2007, she was declared the country’s best-selling poet.
More quotes from Mary Oliver
I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write.
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I simply do not distinguish between work and play.
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As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other.
American poet
If I’ve done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.
American poet
I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.
American poet
I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it.
American poet
So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
American poet
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
American poet
To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
American poet
In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.
American poet
Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing – soften their roughest edges – to accommodate themselves toward a group response.
American poet
I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.
American poet
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.
American poet
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
American poet
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
American poet
Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.
American poet
My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It’s early work, derivative work.
American poet