QuoteProject
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
Mary Oliver
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Paying attention is a crucial and ongoing task in life.

Mary Oliver emphasizes the importance of attention and mindfulness in our lives. By stating that paying attention is our 'endless and proper work,' she suggests that truly engaging with the world around us is both a lifelong pursuit and a foundational aspect of living meaningfully.

Themes

AttentionMindfulnessAwarenessPresenceLife

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about living fully, someone might say, 'As Mary Oliver wisely noted, to pay attention is our endless and proper work.'

More from Mary Oliver

I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
Mary OliverRead
At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all.
Mary OliverRead
I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.
Mary OliverRead
For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
Mary OliverRead
If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.
Mary OliverRead
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
Mary OliverRead

Similar quotes

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
Leonardo Da VinciRead
Don't be too hard on me. Everyone has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time.
Albert EinsteinRead
Rule, after you have first learned to submit to rule.
SolonRead
If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.
Jane SmileyRead
I have a lot of what you might call creative self-loathing - I have pretty high expectations, and they seem to consistently be higher than what I'm able to accomplish.
Alejandro Gonzalez InarrituRead
One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Mary Oliver | QuoteProject