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.

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

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__ust 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__r 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__y sundial__ow well we have done.How well we have done, or how badly. Alas,That is a long thought. Let me hope we all pass.

You don't have to suffer to be a poet adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

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

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.

Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.

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.

You have to fall in love with hanging around words.

Boys are the cash of war. Whoever said: we're not free spenders- doesn't know our like.

Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.

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

Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.

There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.

(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.

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.