Quotes by Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell

A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss, Goethe said; a correct answer, Gertrude would have said, is like a slap in the face.

Answers

Gertrude

Kissing

A poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it.

Forget

Speak

Way

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

Lightning

Men

Poetry

A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental when the poem is good, or embarrassing or absurd when it is bad and he is not permitted to say how the good poem is good, and may never know how the bad poem is bad. It is better to write about other people’s poetry.

People

Successful

Writing

Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said, their voices rising) with the American novelist Gertrude Johnson.

Age

Novelists

Voice

An intelligent man said that the world felt Napoleon as a weight, and that when he died it would give a great oof of relief. This is just as true of Byron, or of such Byrons of their days as Kipling and Hemingway: after a generation or two the world is tired of being their pedestal, shakes them of with an oof, and then – hoisting onto its back a new world-figure – feels the penetrating satisfaction of having made a mistake all its own.

Intelligent

Mistake

Tired

And the world said, Child, you will not be missed. You are cheaper than a wrench, your back is a road; Your death is a table in a book. You had our wit, our heart was sealed to you: Man is the judgment of the world.

Book

Children

Heart

Art is long, and critics are the insects of a day.

Art

Insects

Long

Art matters not merely because it is the most magnificent ornament and the most nearly unfailing occupation of our lives, but because it is life itself.

Art

Occupation

Ornaments

Both in verse and in prose [Karl] Shapiro loves, partly out of indignation and partly out of sheer mischievousness, to tell the naked truths or half-truths or quarter-truths that will make anybody’s hair stand on end; he is always crying: “But he hasn’t any clothes on!” about an emperor who is half the time surprisingly well-dressed.

Clothes

Hair

Naked

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Age

Air

Animal

Answers

Art

Artist

Attitude

Beggar

Believe

Birthday

Book

Children

Chinese

Cities

Class

Clothes

Country

Crafts

Culture

Cutting

Darkness

Decision

Definitions

Demand

Determination

Disappointment

Empathy

Enough

Equality

Essentials

Evil

Expectations

Facts

Faithful

Fighting

Forget

Frightening

Genius

Gertrude

Girl

Habit

Hair

Happens

Happiness

Heart

Heaven

Home

Hurt

Ideas

Ignorance

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

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The Behaviour Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell

A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss, Goethe said; a correct answer, Gertrude would have said, is like a slap in the face.

A poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it.

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said, their voices rising) with the American novelist Gertrude Johnson.

And the world said, Child, you will not be missed. You are cheaper than a wrench, your back is a road; Your death is a table in a book. You had our wit, our heart was sealed to you: Man is the judgment of the world.

Art is long, and critics are the insects of a day.

Art matters not merely because it is the most magnificent ornament and the most nearly unfailing occupation of our lives, but because it is life itself.

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Topics by Randall Jarrell

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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