Quote

All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.

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
Lovers
Pure
Vision
Live
Summon
Declare
Longing
Endure

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

Image
I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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.
Theodore Roethke
Image
How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Being, not doing, is my first joy.
Theodore Roethke
Image
How terrible the need for God.
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
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
What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
Image
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
Image
The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
Theodore Roethke
Image
What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I have gone into the waste lonely places
Theodore Roethke
Image
I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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
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