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
Place
Dares
Light
Stops
Live
Immense
Things
Emptiness
Dare
Wings
Beats
Bird
Immeasurable

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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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.
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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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I came to love, I came into my own.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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.
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
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A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion.
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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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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.
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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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