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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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In this place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.
Theodore Roethke
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
Theodore Roethke
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
Theodore Roethke
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
Theodore Roethke
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How terrible the need for God.
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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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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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
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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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What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
Theodore Roethke
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
Theodore Roethke
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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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I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke