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Time marks us while we are marking time.

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
Marking
Marks
Suicide
Mark
Death
Time

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
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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 wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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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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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
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How terrible the need for God.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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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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A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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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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What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
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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