Mary Oliver Quotes

[Prayer] takes no time, but it occupies all our time.

You don't necessarily have to be religious to pray.

Prayer is looking out from a different set of eyes, which are not comparing, competing, judging, labeling or analyzing, but receiving the moment in its present wholeness and unwholeness. That is what is meant by contemplation.

Prayer is in all things, in all gestures.

I pray. Prayer is a time to connect with the divine, but also time, I'm sure, to concentrate one's thoughts, to meditate, and to imagine what might be.

There are some people who, in order not to pray use as an excuse the fact that life is so hectic that it prevents us from praying. This cannot be. Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer. It is not necessary to always be in meditation, nor to consciously experience the sensation that we are talking to God, no matter how nice that would be. What matters is being with Him, living in Him, in His will. To love with a pure heart, to love everybody, especially to live the poor, is a twenty-four hour prayer.

When I wake up, I immediately pray. When I go to sleep, I pray. Honestly, a prayer every second, in every breath. I suggest the whole world to do it. Prayer is amazing.

The trouble with our praying is, we just do it as a means of last resort.

There is no need to get to a place of prayer; pray wherever you are.

It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last of the evening.

We can learn more in an hour praying, when praying indeed, than from many hours of rigorous study.

For those who never pray, maybe now you will. For those of us who attempt to pray, maybe we can pray more.

I pray to start my day and finish it in prayer.

Spirituality - prayer - is a big part of my life.

When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.

I am a very spiritual person. Maybe not traditionally religious in terms of Sunday Mass every week, that sort of thing.

If we really want to achieve true prayer, we must turn our backs upon everything temporal, everything external, everything that is not divine.

Silence is the pause in me when I am near to God.

Prayer is where the action is.

I know that I pray a lot, and I take time for myself.

What I dislike least in my former self are the moments of prayer.

Take prayer with you wherever you go. Say it anytime, and then focus your mind and heart on God.

Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

Good praying is more easily caught than taught.

Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer.