Theodore Roethke famous quotes

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Inspirational #Faith #Teaching

Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Relationship #Love Is #Vulnerable

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

#Nature #Attitude #Flower

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

#Failure #Adversity #Wrestling

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

#Moving #Religion #Gardening

All finite things reveal infinitude: The mountain with its singular bright shade Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, The after-light upon ice-burdened pines; Odor of basswood upon a mountain slope, A scene beloved of bees; Silence of water above a sunken tree: The pure serene of memory of one man,- A ripple widening from a single stone Winding around the waters of the world.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Memories #Men #Light

I have gone into the waste lonely places
-- Theodore Roethke

#Lonely #Waste #Gone

May my silences become more accurate.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Silence #May #Accuracy

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

#Thinking #Phones #Mad

I learn by going where I have to go.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Character

What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
-- Theodore Roethke

#Positivity #Odds #Soul

I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Song #Teach #Sigh

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

#Intuition #Mind #Intelligence

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

#Philosophy #Dying

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

#Long #Water #Together

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

#Doe #Body #Spirit

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

#Art #Mean #Damage

The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
-- Theodore Roethke

#God #Freedom #Wind

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

#Fire #Desire #Impulse

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

#Knowledge #Thinking #Feelings

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

#Dark #Play #Soul

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

#Fall #Light #World

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

#Desire #Want #Partners

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

#Summer #Rain #Rivers

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

#Cat #Journey #Wind

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

#Death #Suicide #Mark

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

#Humility #Heart #Self

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

#Light #Darkness

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

#Fall

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

#Fear #Sleep #Learning

The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as a friend. The feud we kept with space comes to an end.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Distance #Space #Long

I learned not to fear infinity, The far field, the windy cliffs of forever, The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow, The wheel turning away from itself, The sprawl of the wave, The on-coming water.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Light #White #Water

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

#Heart #Long #Quiet

My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Mother #Boys #Hands

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

#Believe #Holy

In the kingdom of bang and blab.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Bangs #Kingdoms

How terrible the need for God.
-- Theodore Roethke

#God #Needs #Terrible

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

#Morning #Light #Air

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

#Book #Important #Importance

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Fall #Sleep #Air

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

#Rowing #Boat #Breathe

I have come to a still, but not a deep center, A point outside the glittering current; My eyes stare at the bottom of a river, At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains, My mind moves in more than one place, In a country half-land, half-water. I am renewed by death, thought of my death, The dry scent of a dying garden in September, The wind fanning the ash of a low fire. What I love is near at hand, Always, in earth and air.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Country #Moving #Eye

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

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

#Reason #Shed

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

#Sleep #Dark #Blessing

Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Men #Mystery #Prisoner

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

#Bones

A terrible violence of creation,A flash into the burning heart of the abominable;Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,The burning lake turns into a forest pool,The fire subsides into rings of water,A sunlit silence.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Heart #Fire #Lakes

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

#Reality #Dazzle #Too Much

Beginnings start without shade,Thinner than minnows.The live grass whirls with the sun,Feet run over the simple stones,There's time enough.Behold, in the lout's eye, love.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Running #Eye #Simple

Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;And love, love sang toward.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Dream #Rain #Flower

I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planet;As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Mean #Order #Broken

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

#Light #Crow #Ears

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

#Self #Shields #Naked

And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,Will turn its private substance into green,And young shoots spread upon our inner world.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Long #Mind #Substance

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

#Fear #Father #Stones

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

#Dark #Mind #Dark Times

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

#Civilization #Culture

I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Cutting #Water #Veins

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

#Beautiful #Overwhelmed #Disorder

Wake the happy words.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Crafts

I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another. With bats, weasels, worms...I rejoice in the kinship. Even the caterpillar I can love, and the various vermin.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Nature #Toads #Bats

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

#Joy #Firsts

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

#Self Esteem #Soul #Should

You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Believe #Miracle #Poetry

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

#Shadow

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

#Pain #Fire #Bones

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

#Vision #Lovers #Longing

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

#Giving Up #Breathing #Giving

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

#Eye #Dark #Light

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

#Waiting #Dying #Longing

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

#Body

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

#Wings #Light #Bird

What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have........ ....... Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. ~From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke
-- Theodore Roethke

#Summer #Wall #Dark

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

#Inspirational #Waiting #Spirit

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

#Roots #Soul #Body

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

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

#Love Is #Joy #Torment

And what a congress of stinks!- Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks, Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Life #Giving Up #Breathing

The indignity of it!- With everything blooming above me, Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses, Whole fields lovely and inviolate,- Me down in the fetor of weeds, Crawling on all fours, Alive, in a slippery grave.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Weed #Rose #Lovely

I can't go on flying apart just for those who want the benefit of a few verbal kicks. My God, do you know what poems like that cost? They're not written vicariously: they come out of actual suffering, real madness.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Real #Flying #Suffering

O Lord, may I never want to look good. O Jesus, may I always read it all: out loud and the very way it should be. May I never look at the other findings until I have come to my own true conclusions: May I care for the least of the young: and become aware of the one poem that each may have written; may I be aware of what each thing is, delighted with form, and wary of the false comparison; may I never use the word "brilliant."
-- Theodore Roethke

#Jesus #Teaching #Looks

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

#Feelings #Done #Dear God

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

#Art #Hysteria #Defense

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

#Soul #Body

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

#Girl #Writing #Boys

Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Astonishment

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

#Heart #Poet

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

#Teaching #Damage #Contact

Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil; All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe.
-- Theodore Roethke

#Weed #Son #Men

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

#Real #Lines #Fool

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

#Teaching #Fishing #Beginners

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

#Teaching #Rooms #Suggestions