Carolina QuotesThe best of causes ruins as quickly as the worst; and the road to Limbo is paved with writers who have done everything — I am being sympathetic, not satiric — for the very best reasons.
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
“Changes of Attitude and Rhetoric in Auden’s Poetry”, p. 149
- work
- The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
- year
- 1969
- locator
- p. 149
Cite this record
“The best of causes ruins as quickly as the worst; and the ro…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-7FD63D0AFE. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/7fd63d0afe
More from Randall Jarrell
[Kenneth Patchen] has a real, but disorganized, self-indulgent, but rather commonplace talent. This is not Mr. Patchen’s opinion of himself. (Nor is it that of William Carlos Williams, who almost invents a new language, a kind of system of emotional nonsense syllables, in his effort to praise Mr. Patchen properly. For instance, Mr. Patchen is “a hawk on the grave of John Donne.” I should have called him a parrot on the stones of half a cemetery.)
We were given drinks, and drank them, and talked while we drank them. But talked, here, is a euphemism: we had that conversation about how you make a Martini. The people in Hell, Dr. Rosenbaum had told me once, say nothing but What? Americans in Hell tell each other how to make Martinis.
Compare the saint who, asked what he would do if he had only an hour to live, replied that he would go on with his game of chess, since it was as much worship as anything else he had ever done.