Quote

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

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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Beats
Bird
Immeasurable
Place
Dares
Light
Stops
Live
Immense
Things
Emptiness
Dare
Wings

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.
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The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swamplandDisturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planetAs if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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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.
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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In the kingdom of bang and blab.
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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How terrible the need for God.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
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