Theodore Roethke

“I learn by going where I have to go.”

“I trust all joy”

“God bless the roots! Body and soul are one.”

“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.”

“When true love broke my heart in half,I took the whiskey from the shelf,And told my neighbors when to laugh.I keep a dog, and bark myself.”

“Love is not love until love's vulnerable.”

“The MistakeHe left his pants upon a chair:She was a widow, so she said:But he was apprehended, bare,By one who rose up from the dead.”

“By daily dying, I have come to be.”

“A mind too active is no mind at all.”

“What's freedom for? To know eternity.”

“Love begets love. This torment is my joy.”

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

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

“May my silences become more accurate.”

“I came to love, I came into my own.”

“Time marks us while we are marking time.”

“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.”

“The soul has many motions, body one.”

“What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.”

“What's madness but nobility of soulAt 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”