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

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
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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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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
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
Theodore Roethke
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
Theodore Roethke
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
Theodore Roethke
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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
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How terrible the need for God.
Theodore Roethke
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
Theodore Roethke
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I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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.
Theodore Roethke
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke