Quote

What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?

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
Guts
Importance
Books
Book
Important

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

Image
Time marks us while we are marking time.
Theodore Roethke
Image
I came to love, I came into my own.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
Image
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
Theodore Roethke
Image
Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
Image
Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
Theodore Roethke
Image
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
Image
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
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
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
Image
How terrible the need for God.
Theodore Roethke
Image
So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
Theodore Roethke
Image
What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
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 wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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
I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Theodore Roethke