Quote

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

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
Conditions
Waiting
Intolerable
Another
Adolescence
Place
Ill
Much
Longing
Time
Condition
Defined
Dying

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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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I learn by going where I have to go.
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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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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.
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A terrible violence of creation,A flash into the burning heart of the abominableYet 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.
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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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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How terrible the need for God.
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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