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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.

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
Hysteria
Defense
Death
Art

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
Theodore Roethke
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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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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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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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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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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I came to love, I came into my own.
Theodore Roethke
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
Theodore Roethke
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How terrible the need for God.
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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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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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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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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.
Theodore Roethke
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And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,Will turn its private substance into green,And young shoots spread upon our inner world.
Theodore Roethke