All Theodore Roethke Quotes
- I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form. Form
- My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy.… Battered
- The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back; Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat. Along
- 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… Cannot Fear
- 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… Among
- By daily dying, I have come to be. Daily
- 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. Beats
- (I measure time by how a body sways.) Body
- I have gone into the waste lonely places Gone
- So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition. Adolescence
- 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. Begins
- Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath. Breath
- 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… Cliffs
- All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure. All
- Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire Bones
- May my silences become more accurate. Accuracy
- The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow. Dissolved
- You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems… Believe
- Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul? Becomes
- I learn by going where I have to go. Character
- The self says, I am; The heart says, I am less; The spirit says, you are Nothing. Heart
- But still the delicate slips keepcoaxing up water; The small cells bulge; One nub of growth Nudges a sand-crumb loose, Bulge
- I have come to a still, but not a deep center, A point outside the glittering current; My eyes stare at the bottom of a… Bottom