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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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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Lovers
Word
Fall
Spirit
Light
World
Rise
Flesh

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
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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.
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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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.
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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.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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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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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
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore Roethke
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I have gone into the waste lonely places
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