John Ciardi Quotes:- John Ciardi (June 24, 1916 – March 30, 1986) was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet, he also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy, wrote several volumes of children’s poetry, pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, and directed the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont.
Inspirational John Ciardi Quotes
“What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? The 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
“You don’t have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.”-John Ciardi
“A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students.”-John Ciardi
“Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.”-John Ciardi
“Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.”-John Ciardi
“The day will happen whether or not you get up.”-John Ciardi
“Written by a sponge dipped in warm milk and sprinkled with sugar.”-John Ciardi
“The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn’t deserve it, give it to him anyhow.”-John Ciardi
“Nothing goes further toward a man’s liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.”-John Ciardi
“Poetry lies its way to the truth.”-John Ciardi
Famous John Ciardi Quotes
“Every game ever invented by mankind is a way of making things hard for the fun of it!”-John Ciardi
“A neighborhood is a residential area that is changing for the worse.”-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 confusion.”-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
“The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.”-John Ciardi
“Gentility is what is leftover from rich ancestors after the money is gone.”-John Ciardi
“Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.”-John Ciardi
“The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.”-John Ciardi
