Theodore Roethke - Man Quotes

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God bless the roots! — Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Theodore Roethke
Brooding on God, I may become a man.
Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire; What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.

Theodore Roethke
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
I take this cadence from a man named Yeats:
I take it and I give it back again:
For other tunes and other wanton beats
Have tossed my heart and fiddled through my brain.
Yes, I was dancing mad, and how
That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.

Theodore Roethke
Definition of a philosopher: a man who has the right to say maybe.

Theodore Roethke
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
The wind sharpened itself on a rock;
A voice sang:
Pleasure on ground
Has no sound,
Easily maddens
The uneasy man.

Theodore Roethke
All finite things reveal infinitude: The mountain with its singular bright shade Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, The after-light upon ice-burdened pines; Odor of basswood upon a mountain slope, A scene beloved of bees; Silence of water above a sunken tree: The pure serene of memory of one man,- A ripple widening from a single stone Winding around the waters of the world.

Theodore Roethke