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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
Spirit
Nothing
Self
Heart
Humility
Says
Less

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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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.
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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I learn by going where I have to go.
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Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.
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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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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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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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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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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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You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.
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I came to love, I came into my own.
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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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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How terrible the need for God.
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
Theodore Roethke
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Theodore Roethke