155 Quotes by Theodore Roethke

(I measure time by how a body sways.)

The indignity of it!- With everything blooming above me, Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses, Whole fields lovely and inviolate,- Me down in the fetor of weeds, Crawling on all fours, Alive, in a slippery grave.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Wake the happy words.

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