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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.

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
Humility
Says
Less
Spirit
Nothing
Self
Heart

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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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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.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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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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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
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
Theodore Roethke
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
Theodore Roethke
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
Theodore Roethke
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
Theodore Roethke