John Ciardi Quotes (24 Quotes)

Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.

There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.

Every game ever invented by mankind, is a way of making things hard for the fun of it!

What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down.

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.

Written by a sponge dipped in warm milk and sprinkled with sugar.

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students.

Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.

Bah You asked for it. This is your life. The price is right enough. You've got no secrets. People are . . . well, never mind. But tell me, boys and girls and Federal gentlemen, has anyone had time to think of Khrushchev lately

The day will happen whether or not you get up.

But when the pen is in his hand he has to write by itch and twitch, though certainly his itch and twitch are intimately conditioned by all his past itching and twitching, and by all his past theorizing about them.

Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.

You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.

A neighborhood is a residential area that is changing for the worse.

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.

It's not a how-to-do-it school but more nearly a confessional in which people who have spent their lives at the writing process itemize their failures while clinging to their hopes.

The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow.

Nothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.

The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.

A dollar saved is a quarter earned.

It is easy enough to praise men for the courage of their convictions. I wish I could teach the sad young of this mealy generation the courage of their confusions.