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.

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.

Wake the happy words.

Being, not doing, is my first joy.

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

Be sure that whatever you are is you.

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

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.

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

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.

What falls away is always. And is near.

By daily dying, I have come to be.

Love begets love. This torment is my joy.

God bless the roots! Body and soul are one.

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

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.

I came to love, I came into my own.

Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner.

(I measure time by how a body sways.)

Art is our defense against hysteria and death.

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

In the kingdom of bang and blab.

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

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.

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.

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. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

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.

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

I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs.

Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul?

Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.

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

Live in a perpetual great astonishment.

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

A mind too active is no mind at all.

The damage of teaching: the constant contact with the undeveloped.

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

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.

And I rejoiced in being what I was.

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.

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.

The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.

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

Time marks us while we are marking time.

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.

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

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.

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.