John Ciardi Quotes

And the time sundials tellMay be minutes and hours. But it may just as wellBe seconds and sparkles, or seasons and flowers.No, I don't think of time as just minutes and hours.Time can be heartbeats, or bird songs, or miles,Or waves on a beach, or ants in their files(They do move like seconds—just watch their feet go:Tick-tick-tick, like a clock). You'll learn as you growThat whatever there is in a garden, the sunCounts up on its dial. By the time it is doneOur sundial—or someone's— will certainly addAll the good things there are. Yes, and all of the bad.And if anyone's here for the finish, the sunWill have told him—by sundial—how well we have done.How well we have done, or how badly. Alas,That is a long thought. Let me hope we all pass.

~ John Ciardi

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

~ John Ciardi

Tell me how much a nation knows about its own language, and I will tell you how much that nation knows about its own identity.

~ John Ciardi

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.

~ John Ciardi

He had his choice, and he liked the worst.

~ John Ciardi

Most Like an Arch This MarriageMost like an arch—an entrance which upholds and shores the stone-crush up the air like lace. Mass made idea, and idea held in place. A lock in time. Inside half-heaven unfolds.Most like an arch—two weaknesses that lean into a strength. Two fallings become firm. Two joined abeyances become a term naming the fact that teaches fact to mean.Not quite that? Not much less. World as it is, what’s strong and separate falters. All I do at piling stone on stone apart from you is roofless around nothing. Till we kissI am no more than upright and unset. It is by falling in and in we makethe all-bearing point, for one another’s sake, in faultless failing, raised by our own weight.

~ John Ciardi

(Conviction) is possible only in a world more primitive than ours can be perceived to be. A man can achieve a simply gnomic conviction only by ignoring the radical describers of his environment or by hating them as convinced men have hated say Darwin and Freud as agents of some devil.

~ 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

There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.

~ John Ciardi

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

~ John Ciardi

You have to fall in love with hanging around words.

~ John Ciardi

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.

~ 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

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

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

~ 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

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

~ John Ciardi