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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.

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
Astonishment
Perpetual
Live
Great

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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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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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Time marks us while we are marking time.
Theodore Roethke
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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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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
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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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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
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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I have gone into the waste lonely places
Theodore Roethke
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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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We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Theodore Roethke