95+ Theodore Roethke Quotes On Death, Top Of A Greenhouse And Mystic

Theodore Roethke was an American poet who was active in the mid-20th century. He is known for his use of natural imagery in his poetry and for his experimentation with different forms and styles. Roethke won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1954 for his collection The Waking. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Theodore Roethke on love, death, life.

Top 10 Theodore Roethke Quotes

1. What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.
2. Beginnings start without shade,Thinner than minnows.The live grass whirls with the sun,Feet run over the simple stones,There's time enough.Behold, in the lout's eye, love.
3. Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.
4. Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
5. How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
6. May my silences become more accurate.
7. I have gone into the waste lonely places
8. Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light.
9. Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.
10. Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;Too close immediacy an exhaustion

Theodore Roethke Short Quotes

• Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
• I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
• Being, not doing, is my first joy.
• A mind too active is no mind at all.
• What is madness but nobility of soul. At odds with circumstance?
• Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
• God bless the roots! Body and soul are one.
• In a dark time, the eye begins to see.
• Time marks us while we are marking time.
• I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestowUpon that God who knows what I would know.

Theodore Roethke Quotes About Love

I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another. With bats, weasels, worms...I rejoice in the kinship. Even the caterpillar I can love, and the various vermin. — Theodore Roethke

Love begets love. This torment is my joy. — Theodore Roethke

Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;And love, love sang toward. — Theodore Roethke

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

I came to love, I came into my own. — Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke Quotes About Life

I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planet;As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration. — Theodore Roethke

Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath. — Theodore Roethke

And what a congress of stinks!- Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks, Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath. — Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke Quotes About Light

I learned not to fear infinity, The far field, the windy cliffs of forever, The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow, The wheel turning away from itself, The sprawl of the wave, The on-coming water. — Theodore Roethke

Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all. — Theodore Roethke

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

And I walked, I walked through the light air; I moved with the morning. — Theodore Roethke

The darkness has it's own light. — Theodore Roethke

The light comes brighter from the east; the cawOf restive crows is sharper on the ear. — Theodore Roethke

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

Theodore Roethke Quotes About Wait

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition. — Theodore Roethke

A terrible violence of creation,A flash into the burning heart of the abominable;Yet 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

A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait. — Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke Famous Quotes And Sayings

In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write. — Theodore Roethke

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

What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new? — Theodore Roethke

My truths are all foreknown,This anguish self-revealed.I'm naked to the bone,With nakedness my shield. — Theodore Roethke

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

I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet. — Theodore Roethke

To follow the drops sliding from a lifting oar, Head up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward. — Theodore Roethke

You must believe a poem is a holy thing, a good poem, that is. — Theodore Roethke

The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind. — Theodore Roethke

We think by feeling. What is there to know? — Theodore Roethke

Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line. — Theodore Roethke

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries. — Theodore Roethke

Wake the happy words. — Theodore Roethke

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

What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have........ ....... Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. ~From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke — Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the mind begins to see. — Theodore Roethke

Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones. — Theodore Roethke

I learn by going where I have to go. — Theodore Roethke

Art is our defense against hysteria and death. — Theodore Roethke

The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do! — Theodore Roethke

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire — Theodore Roethke

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

The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow. — Theodore Roethke

Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner. — Theodore Roethke

The body and the soul know how to play In that dark world where gods have lost their way. — Theodore Roethke

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley. — Theodore Roethke

The soul has many motions, body one. — Theodore Roethke

I can't go on flying apart just for those who want the benefit of a few verbal kicks. My God, do you know what poems like that cost? They're not written vicariously: they come out of actual suffering, real madness. — Theodore Roethke

When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone. — Theodore Roethke

All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure. — Theodore Roethke

The damage of teaching: the constant contact with the undeveloped. — Theodore Roethke

I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs. — Theodore Roethke

How terrible the need for God. — Theodore Roethke

The self says, I am; The heart says, I am less; The spirit says, you are Nothing. — Theodore Roethke

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

I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more. — Theodore Roethke

What falls away is always. And is near. — Theodore Roethke

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

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go. — Theodore Roethke

In the kingdom of bang and blab. — Theodore Roethke

The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back; Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat. — Theodore Roethke

The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone. — Theodore Roethke

O Lord, may I never want to look good. O Jesus, may I always read it all: out loud and the very way it should be. May I never look at the other findings until I have come to my own true conclusions: May I care for the least of the young: and become aware of the one poem that each may have written; may I be aware of what each thing is, delighted with form, and wary of the false comparison; may I never use the word "brilliant." — Theodore Roethke

And I rejoiced in being what I was. — Theodore Roethke

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

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

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form. — Theodore Roethke

By daily dying, I have come to be. — Theodore Roethke

All finite things reveal infinitude: The mountain with its singular bright shade Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, The after-light upon ice-burdened pines; Odor of basswood upon a mountain slope, A scene beloved of bees; Silence of water above a sunken tree: The pure serene of memory of one man,- A ripple widening from a single stone Winding around the waters of the world. — Theodore Roethke

(I measure time by how a body sways.) — Theodore Roethke

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

Civilization is over-rated, but there isn't much else. — Theodore Roethke

Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul? — Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. — Theodore Roethke

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

Be sure that whatever you are is you. — Theodore Roethke

What is desire?-- The impulse to make someone else complete? That woman would set sodden straw on fire. — Theodore Roethke

Life Lessons by Theodore Roethke

1. Theodore Roethke encourages us to embrace change and to be open to the unknown, as it can lead to growth and self-discovery.
2. He also reminds us to stay connected to nature, as it can provide us with a sense of peace and perspective on life.
3. Lastly, he encourages us to stay true to ourselves and to find our own unique voice in the world.