Theodore Roethke quotes - page 5

Art is our defense against hysteria and death. (Theodore Roethke)
Wake the happy words. View quote
Theodore Roethke
Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire. View quote
Theodore Roethke
I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing. View quote
Theodore Roethke
Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul? View quote
Theodore Roethke
I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form. View quote
Theodore Roethke
What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new? View quote
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. View quote
Theodore Roethke
The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone. View quote
Theodore Roethke
How terrible the need for God. View quote
Theodore Roethke
I shook the softening chalk of my bones, Saying, Snail, snail, glister me forward, Bird, soft-sigh me home, Worm, be with me. This is my hard time. (Theodore Roethke)
Dante attained the purgatorial hill, Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw, Shook with a mighty power beyond his will, - Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw? All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure. View quote
Theodore Roethke
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I'm martyr to a motion not my own; What's freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways.) View quote
Theodore Roethke
How can I rest in the days of my slowness? I've become a strange piece of flesh, Nervous and cold, bird-furtive, whiskery, With a cheek soft as a hound's ear. What's left is light as a seed; I need an old crone's knowing. View quote
Theodore Roethke