Book detail: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
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“He believes too much, and he knows too much. That's what we call mad.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Men see their Beatrice with a luminous shimmer, a numinous haze, a close and yet far quality: but what do women see?”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Surely goodness and mercy can be more choosy.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“My grief was excessive, but I recovered.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Move over, sensitive sad minds.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Description: the landscape's usually better for a sign of the human. But don't lug him in like an ambulent cabbage.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“My great truth: it is possible to love the human race.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“If there is not another life, there is at least another way to live.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“We live by being what we should not be.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Sure I'm crazy
But it ain't easy”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The grandeurs of the crazy man alone,
Himself the middle of a roaring world.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Act your heart. There's nothing else.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“I'm blistered from insights.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The sun's never down for excessive men;
Their bellies light themselves a fire;
Who dare to romp from dawn to dawn.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“I feel the weight of stars...”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“One teaches out of love: it's an impertinence, an imposition, in the end it's terrifying.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“I am a poet: I am always hungry.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The intuitive poet often begins most felicitously, but raptures are hard to sustain.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“To be less than you are is so easy: even a child needs no lessons in this.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Men are made by books.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“It’s your privilege to find me incomprehensible. I gave you my minutes; let them remain ours. I hope I haunt you.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“After Mr. Richard M. Nixon, I feel that sincerity is no longer possible as a public attitude.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“In poetry, there are no casual readers.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The greatest assassin of life is haste.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Remind yourself once more of the absolute holiness of your task.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“People can and do understand poetry but they don't want to: it is a danger.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“What's the winter for?
To remember love.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The terrible energy of the dead.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The Siberian pitilessness, the essential ruthlessness of the Middle West as I knew it: an accepted thing.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“And it all seems to have meaning, even the broken machinery,
The abandoned oil wells, the rowboat sunk in the ice of winter...
Is this waste, this debris a necessary part of our energy?”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Those taught to creep become enchanted with such locomotion.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Talent talks; genius does.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Hatred of life can rise to a mystical state.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Even a piece of bad writing can have its own mysterious life, and be a fascination.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Civilization is overrated: but there isn't anything much else.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Will's a heady master: don't follow.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The great mystery of Christianity is how it has lasted so long.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Listen to the haters: they may remind you of new ways to love.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The professor is supposed to know. I am not of that breed.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“What a frail but persistent weapon civilization is: how fragile the handful of concepts: yet tough as wire.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Democracy: where the semi-literate make laws and the illiterate enforce them.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The young artist: there is no other kind of mind but my own.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Transcend that vision. What is first or early is easy to believe. But... it may enchain you.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“It's not that many Americans can't think: They just don't want to.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“There is no end to what should be known about words.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“More than two days in Detroit is not permitted the human psyche.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The most difficult thing to remember: that a poem is made of words.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Teaching: one of the few professions that permit love.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“We can forgive others everything but our own weaknesses.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Once a week, take a day off to be generous-minded.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke