John Ciardi Quotes

There's nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.

The day will happen whether or not you get up.

Let our love be like an arch- two weaknesses leaning together to form one strength.

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

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

Men marry what they need. I marry you.

Fermentation and civilization are inseparable.

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

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

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

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 have to fall in love with hanging around words.

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.

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

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

Fermentation equals civilization.

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.

Early to bed and early to rise probably indicates unskilled labor.

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.

Patience is the art of caring slowly.

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

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

Boys are the cash of war. Whoever said: we're not free spenders- doesn't know our like.

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

Boys are the cash of war.

A carbonated wine foisted upon Americans (who else would drink it?) by winery ad agencies as a way of getting rid of inferior champagne by mixing it with inferior burgundy.

A dollar saved is a quarter earned.

A man is what he does with his attention and mine is not for sale.

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

The public library is the most dangerous place in town

Tell me how much a nation knows about its own language, and I will tell you how much that nation knows about its own identity.

Spontaneous is what you get after the seventeenth draft.

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

To read a poem with no thought in mind but to paraphrase it into a single, simple and usually high-minded prose statement is the destruction of poetry.

A savage is simply a human organism that has not received enough news from the human race.

The success of the poem is determined not by how much the poet felt in writing it, but by how much the reader feels in reading it.

Honesty: The ability to resist small temptations.

Who could believe an ant in theory? A giraffe in blueprint? Ten thousand doctors of what's possible Could reason half the jungle out of being.

I'm smiled out, talked out, quipped out, socialized so far from any being, I need the weight of mortal silences to get realized back into myself.

I have one head that wants to be good, And one that wants to be bad. And always, as soon as I get up, One of my heads is sad.

General rules have been legislated into being by past masters.

The thing about cats, as you may find, Is that no one knows what they have in mind.

The day will happenwhether or not you get up

He had his choice, and he liked the worst.

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.

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

There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.

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

I have one head that wants to be good, And one that wants to be bad.And always, as soon as I get up, One of my heads is sad.