Theodore Roethke Quotes
Collection of top 98 famous quotes about Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational Theodore 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
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 MistakeHe 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
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 AuctionI 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
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 curseThat 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 heartof 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 liveWho 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 playIn 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