Roethke Quotes: top 98 famous quotes about Roethke

Roethke Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Roethke quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

What falls away is always. And is near. — Theodore Roethke

In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write. — Theodore Roethke

A mind too active is no mind at all. — Theodore Roethke

Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love. — Theodore Roethke

The living all assemble! What's the cue?
Do what the clumsy partner wants to do! — Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go. — Theodore Roethke

The Mistake
He left his pants upon a chair:
She was a widow, so she said:
But he was apprehended, bare,
By one who rose up from the dead. — Theodore Roethke

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? — Theodore Roethke

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't. — Theodore Roethke

A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion. — Theodore Roethke

I came to love, I came into my own. — Theodore Roethke

What's freedom for? To know eternity. — Theodore Roethke

I came where the river Ran over stones; My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day. — Theodore Roethke

And I rejoiced in being what I was. — Theodore Roethke

When true love broke my heart in half,
I took the whiskey from the shelf,
And told my neighbors when to laugh.
I keep a dog, and bark myself. — Theodore Roethke

How terrible the need for God. — Theodore Roethke

Over every mountain, there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley. — Theodore Roethke

What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new? — Theodore Roethke

Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath. — Theodore Roethke

My father is a fish. — Theodore Roethke

O my poor words, bear with me. — Theodore Roethke

The stones were sharp,
The wind came at my back;
Walking along the highway,
Mincing like a cat. — Theodore Roethke

All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure. — Theodore Roethke

Maybe God has a house.
But not here. — Theodore Roethke

Civilization is over-rated, but there isn't much else. — Theodore Roethke

(Dreams drain the spirit if we dream too long.) — Theodore Roethke

How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end. — Theodore Roethke

And I walked, I walked through the light air; I moved with the morning. — Theodore Roethke

Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul? — Theodore Roethke

The soul has many motions, body one. — Theodore Roethke

I have gone into the waste lonely places — Theodore Roethke

Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys. — Theodore Roethke

Time marks us while we are marking time. — Theodore Roethke

What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts? — Theodore Roethke

The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone. — Theodore Roethke

The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow. — Theodore Roethke

Wake the happy words. — Theodore Roethke

When I go mad,
I call my friends by phone:
I am afraid they might think
they're alone. — Theodore Roethke

From The Auction
I left my home with unencumbered will
And all the rubbish of confusion sold. — Theodore Roethke

Being, not doing, is my first joy. — Theodore Roethke

Love begets love. This torment is my joy. — Theodore Roethke

Necessity starves on the stoop of invention. — Theodore Roethke

I fear those shadows most that start from my own feet. — Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see. — Theodore Roethke

The darkness has it's own light. — Theodore Roethke

What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? — Theodore Roethke

Live in a perpetual great astonishment. — Theodore Roethke

Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line. — Theodore Roethke

Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;Too close immediacy an exhaustion — Theodore Roethke

In the kingdom of bang and blab. — Theodore Roethke

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying,
An intolerable waiting,
A longing for another place and time,
Another condition. — Theodore Roethke

To follow the drops sliding from a lifting oar, Head up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward ... — Theodore Roethke

My bones whisper to my blood; my sleep deceives me. — Theodore Roethke

She moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be. — Theodore Roethke

The two duties are to lament or praise. — Theodore Roethke

Self-contemplation is a curse
That makes an old confusion worse. — Theodore Roethke

Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones. — Theodore Roethke

Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light. — Theodore Roethke

My truths are all foreknown,This anguish self-revealed.I'm naked to the bone,With nakedness my shield. — Theodore Roethke

A house for wisdom, a field for revelation.
Speak to the stars, and the stars answer. At first the visible obscures:
Go where the light is. — Theodore Roethke

The self says, I am; The heart says, I am less; The spirit says, you are Nothing. — Theodore Roethke

By daily dying, I have come to be. — Theodore Roethke

I do not laugh; I do not cry;
I'm sweating out the will to die.
My past is sliding down the drain;
I soon will be myself again. — Theodore Roethke

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire — Theodore Roethke

I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs,
Yet, like a tree, endure the shift of things. — Theodore Roethke

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart
of form. — Theodore Roethke

The damage of teaching: the constant contact with the undeveloped. — Theodore Roethke

(I measure time by how a body sways.) — Theodore Roethke

Brooding on God, I may become a man. — Theodore Roethke

You must believe a poem is a holy thing, a good poem, that is. — Theodore Roethke

What is desire?
The impulse to make someone else complete?
That woman would set sodden straw on fire. — Theodore Roethke

But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep. — Theodore Roethke

I may look like a beer salesman, but I'm a poet. — Theodore Roethke

In this place of light: he dares to live
Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings
Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things. — Theodore Roethke

The body and the soul know how to play
In that dark world where gods have lost their way. — Theodore Roethke

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries. — Theodore Roethke

I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words. — Theodore Roethke

I learn by going where I have to go — Theodore Roethke

May my silences become more accurate. — Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see / I meet my shadow in the deepening shade ... Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. — Theodore Roethke

The light comes brighter from the east; the cawOf restive crows is sharper on the ear. — Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke was a poet I was raised with so he has a lot of sentimental value for me. — Krist Novoselic

What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance. — Theodore Roethke

A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait. — Theodore Roethke

God bless the roots! Body and soul are one. — Theodore Roethke

Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall:
The word outleaps the world, and light is all. — Theodore Roethke

Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner. — Theodore Roethke

We think by feeling. What is there to know? — Theodore Roethke

I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more. — Theodore Roethke

Be sure that whatever you are is you. — Theodore Roethke

Love makes me naked;
Propinquity's a harsh master;
O the songs we hide singing to ourselves! — Theodore Roethke

I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing. — Theodore Roethke

Art is our defense against hysteria and death. — Theodore Roethke

I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestowUpon that God who knows what I would know. — Theodore Roethke

What we need are more people who specialize in the impossible. — Theodore Roethke

What grace I have is enough. — Theodore Roethke

It's your privilege to find me incomprehensible. I gave you my minutes; let them remain ours. I hope I haunt you. — Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the mind begins to see. — Theodore Roethke