Quote

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

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

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

Image
I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
Theodore Roethke
Image
And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
Theodore Roethke
Image
Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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
The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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
Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
Theodore Roethke
Image
What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
Image
I came to love, I came into my own.
Theodore Roethke
Image
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
Image
Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
Theodore Roethke
Image
A mind too active is no mind at all.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
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.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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