A neighborhood is a residential area that is changing for the worse.
—John Ciardi
Topics: City Life, Cities
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Art, Arts, Artists
Honesty: The ability to resist small temptations.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Honesty
The eternal world is not merely a world beyond time and the grave. It embraces time; it is ready to realize itself under all the forms of temporal things. Its light and power are latent everywhere, waiting for human souls to welcome it, ready to break through the transparent veil of earthly things and to suffuse with its ineffable radiance the common life of man.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Eternity
You don’t have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Poetry, Suffering, Enthusiasm
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
Topics: Hope
Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Intelligence
There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Moderation
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
Topics: Love, Excitement
Aristocracy: What is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Class
Self-government is, indeed, the noblest rule on earth; the obj ect of a loftier ambition than the possession of crowns or sceptres. The truest conquest is where the soul is bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. The monarch of his own mind is the only real potentate.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Self-Control
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
Topics: Change
The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
—John Ciardi
Topics: America
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Education, Colleges, Universities
Patience is the art of caring slowly.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Patience
Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.
—John Ciardi
Topics: Manners
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Ram Dass American Hindu New Age Pioneer
Christa McAuliffe American Teacher
Amos Bronson Alcott American Teacher
Theodore Roethke American Poet
Joseph Goldstein American Buddhist Teacher
Sivaya Subramuniyaswami American Hindu Teacher
Robert Henri American Painter
Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Writer
Robert Frost American Poet
Swami Chinmayananda Indian Hindu Spiritual Teacher