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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?

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
Nobility
Circumstance
Positivity
Odds
Madness
Positive
Circumstances
Soul

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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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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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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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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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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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
Theodore Roethke
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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 came to love, I came into my own.
Theodore Roethke
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
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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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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
Theodore Roethke
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The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!
Theodore Roethke
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Theodore Roethke