John Ciardi Quotes
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Fermentation equals civilization.
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The public library is the most dangerous place in town
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A man is what he does with his attention and mine is not for sale.
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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.
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There's nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.
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The constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
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The day will happen whether or not you get up.
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Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.
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Written by a sponge dipped in warm milk and sprinkled with sugar.
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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.
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Patience is the art of caring slowly.
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Boys are the cash of war. Whoever said: we're not free spenders- doesn't know our like.
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Let our love be like an arch- two weaknesses leaning together to form one strength.
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Every game ever invented by mankind, is a way of making things hard for the fun of it!
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Spontaneous is what you get after the seventeenth draft.
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Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.
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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.
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The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.
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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.
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A savage is simply a human organism that has not received enough news from the human race.
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Nothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.
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Fermentation and civilization are inseparable.
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Early to bed and early to rise probably indicates unskilled labor.
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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.
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Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
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Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.
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You have to fall in love with hanging around words.
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Honesty: The ability to resist small temptations.
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Poetry lies its way to the truth.
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A dollar saved is a quarter earned.
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