John Ciardi Quotes

John Ciardi (23)

Birth:	24th June, 1916
Death:	30th March, 1986
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Poet, Teacher, Translator

Related Authors

• Henry Vaughan
• Emily Bronte
• Robert Fitzgerald
• Raymond Duncan
• Bob Dylan
• Hugh MacDiarmid
• Federico Garcia Lorca
• John Oxenham
• Frank O'Hara
• William Shakespeare

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 18th May

Births

• 1939 - Giovanni Falcone
• 1913 - Nicolás Gómez Dávila
• 1946 - Andreas Katsulas
• 1897 - Frank Capra
• 1949 - Terry Zwigoff

Deaths

• 1909 - Isaac Albeniz
• 1911 - Gustav Mahler
• 1973 - Jeannette Rankin
• 1981 - William Saroyan
• 2009 - Velupillai Prabhakaran

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

  John Ciardi

  Topics in Art

  Tags in Persuade, Modern, Painters, Themselves, Better, Girls, Happens, Stop, Idea, Looking

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

  John Ciardi

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Poetry

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

  John Ciardi

  Topics in Age, Love

  Tags in Word

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

  John Ciardi

• 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.

  John Ciardi

• There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.

  John Ciardi

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

  John Ciardi

•  

  The day will happen whether or not you get up.

   

  John Ciardi

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

  John Ciardi

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

  John Ciardi

• Poetry lies its way to the truth.

  John Ciardi

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

  John Ciardi

• 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.

  John Ciardi

• 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.

  John Ciardi

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

  John Ciardi

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

  John Ciardi

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

  John Ciardi

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

  John Ciardi

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

  John Ciardi

• 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.

  John Ciardi