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Being, not doing, is my first joy.

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
Joy
Firsts
First

More quotes by 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
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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.
Theodore Roethke
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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.
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?
Theodore Roethke
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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.
Theodore Roethke
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
Theodore Roethke
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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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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
Theodore Roethke
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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
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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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
Theodore Roethke
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What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
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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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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
Theodore Roethke
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The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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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But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.
Theodore Roethke