John Ciardi Quotes

The day will happen whether or not you get up.

Men marry what they need. I marry you.

There's nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.

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

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

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

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

Patience is the art of caring slowly.

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.

If a man means his writing seriously, he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate.

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.

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

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.

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

The public library is the most dangerous place in town

At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected, I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who, having been slugged no harder than anyone else, never got up again, neither to fight back, nor to finger their jaws in painful admiration.

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

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

Fermentation and civilization are inseparable.

Spontaneous is what you get after the seventeenth draft.

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

You have to fall in love with hanging around words.

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

Within a single scene, it seems to be unwise to have access to the inner reflections of more than one character. The reader generally needs a single character as the means of perception, as the character to whom the events are happening, as the character with whom he is to empathize in order to have the events of the writing happen to him.