Quote

Love is not love until love's vulnerable.

Theodore Roethke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Vulnerability
Vulnerable
Relationship
Love

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

Image
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
Image
Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
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.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
Theodore Roethke
Image
How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
How terrible the need for God.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I came to love, I came into my own.
Theodore Roethke
Image
The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke
Image
What falls away is always. And is near.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
I have gone into the waste lonely places
Theodore Roethke
Image
When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still calledThe flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollowsAnd love, love sang toward.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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