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
John Ciardi
You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
John Ciardi
The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.
John Ciardi
Nothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.
John Ciardi
Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
John Ciardi
There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.
John Ciardi
The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
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
A neighborhood is a residential area that is changing for the worse.