Quote

I have gone into the waste lonely places

Theodore Roethke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Waste
Places
Gone
Lonely

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

Image
What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I came to love, I came into my own.
Theodore Roethke
Image
In the kingdom of bang and blab.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
Image
What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
Theodore Roethke
Image
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 calledThe flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollowsAnd love, love sang toward.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
Image
What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
Image
How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
Theodore Roethke
Image
And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
Theodore Roethke
Image
How terrible the need for God.
Theodore Roethke
Image
When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
Theodore Roethke
Image
So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
Theodore Roethke