Theodore Roethke Quotes

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

• Pleasure
• Rooms
• Masters
• Explicit
• Sly

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Quotes to Explore

• Love is not love until love's vulnerable.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Love
  • Vulnerable

• I measure time by how a body sways.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Body

• 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
  • Men
  • Long
  • Universe

• A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Spirit
  • Stills
  • Lively

• Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;Too close immediacy an exhaustion

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Reality
  • Exhaustion
  • Immediacy

• 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
  • Men
  • Happens
  • Mystery

• I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Beautiful
  • Eternal
  • Disorder

• Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Reason
  • Shed
  • Dreary

• How terrible the need for God.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • God
  • Needs
  • Terrible

• May my silences become more accurate.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Silence
  • Accurate

• How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Body
  • Spirit
  • Unwind

• Being, not doing, is my first joy.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Joy
  • Firsts

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

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • God
  • Mind
  • Freedom

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

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Light
  • Ears
  • East

• 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
  • Dark
  • Sleep
  • Spirit

• 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
  • Life
  • Rich
  • Congress

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

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Self
  • Naked
  • Anguish

• 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
  • Nature
  • Various
  • Rejoice

• Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Art
  • Damage
  • Haste

• God bless the roots! Body and soul are one.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Soul
  • Body
  • Roots

• 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
  • Broken
  • Natural
  • Importance

• Live in a perpetual great astonishment.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Perpetual
  • Astonishment

• 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
  • Believe
  • Poetry
  • Miracle

• 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
  • Dream
  • Simple
  • Rain