Quotes by John Ciardi

• The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow.
• You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
• Written by a sponge dipped in warm milk and sprinkled with sugar.
• A dollar saved is a quarter earned.
• There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.
• The day will happen whether or not you get up.
• The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
• The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.
• Poetry lies its way to the truth.
• Nothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.
• 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.
• 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.
• Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
• Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.
• Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.
• Every game ever invented by mankind, is a way of making things hard for the fun of it!
• A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students.
• A neighborhood is a residential area that is changing for the worse.
• 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.
• 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.
• Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.