QuoteProject
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 Oliver
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote expresses the joy and beauty found in everyday experiences, akin to discovering something precious in a vast setting.

Mary Oliver's quote highlights the profound moments of joy and wonder that can be encountered in daily life. It suggests that even in a world filled with chaos and overwhelming experiences, there are instances that penetrate our hearts with delight, allowing us to appreciate beauty as fleeting and precious, much like finding a needle amidst a haystack.

Themes

DelightBeautyNatureJoyEverydayWonder

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech on finding joy in small moments.

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
The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, frog voice; now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever from, One or Two Things
Mary OliverRead

Similar quotes

Once you learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you.
Aldo LeopoldRead
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelRead
Human beings grew up in forests; we have a natural affinity for them. How lovely a tree is, straining toward the sky.
Carl SaganRead
Nature knows that people are a tide that swells and in time will ebb, and all their works dissolve ... As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves. We must unhumanize our views a little and become confident as the rock and ocean that we are made from.
Robinson JeffersRead
Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.
Khalil GibranRead
Among all researchers who have worked in the African field, I consider myself one of the most fortunate because of the privilege of having been able to study the mountain gorilla.
Dian FosseyRead

A little wisdom, now and then

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