“The 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

“Changes of Attitude and Rhetoric in Auden’s Poetry”, p. 149
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

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Randall Jarrell 215

poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965

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“The 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.”

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