3 Randall Jarrell Quotes on Freedom

Randall Jarrell quotes on freedom

16. The soul has no assignments, neither cooks Nor referees: it wastes its time. It wastes its time. Here in this enclave there are centuries For you to waste: the short and narrow stream Of life meanders into a thousand valleys Of all that was, or might have been, or is to be. The books, just leafed through, whisper endlessly.

25. She said to Constance, parodying a line of poetry that attracted her, 'In the United States, there one feels free.' But she spoiled it by continuing, 'Except from the Americans - but every pearl has its oyster.'

43. Most of us know, now, that Rousseau was wrong: that man, when you knock his chains off, sets up the death camps. Soon we shall know everything the eighteenth century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.