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I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.

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
Simple
Wish
Find
Much
Event
Meant
Events
Seeing

More quotes by 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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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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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.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
Theodore Roethke
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
Theodore Roethke
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Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones.
Theodore Roethke
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
Theodore Roethke
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
Theodore Roethke
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So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
Theodore Roethke
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
Theodore Roethke
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
Theodore Roethke
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By daily dying, I have come to be.
Theodore Roethke
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
Theodore Roethke
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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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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I learn by going where I have to go.
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
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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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Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Theodore Roethke
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Time marks us while we are marking time.
Theodore Roethke