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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

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John Ciardi
Age: 69 †
Born: 1916
Born: June 24
Died: 1986
Died: March 30
Journalist
Linguist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
John Anthony Ciardi
Keep
Prodigals
Nothing
Hopeful
Every
Dad
Time
Parent
Open
Hope
Father
House
Prodigal

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Fermentation equals civilization.
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Spontaneous is what you get after the seventeenth draft.
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The constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
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A university is a reading and discussion club. If students knew how to use the library, they wouldn't need the rest of the buildings. The faculty's job, in great part, is to teach students how to use a library in a living way. All a student should really need is access to the library and a place to sleep.
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Patience is the art of caring slowly.
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Honesty: The ability to resist small temptations.
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Fermentation and civilization are inseparable.
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Within a single scene, it seems to be unwise to have access to the inner reflections of more than one character. The reader generally needs a single character as the means of perception, as the character to whom the events are happening, as the character with whom he is to empathize in order to have the events of the writing happen to him.
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At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected, I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who, having been slugged no harder than anyone else, never got up again, neither to fight back, nor to finger their jaws in painful admiration.
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Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
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A savage is simply a human organism that has not received enough news from the human race.
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The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow.
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The day will happen whether or not you get up.
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I'm smiled out, talked out, quipped out, socialized so far from any being, I need the weight of mortal silences to get realized back into myself.
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The public library is the most dangerous place in town
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It is easy enough to praise men for the courage of their conviction. I wish I could teach the sad young of this mealy generation the courage of their convictions.
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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.
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A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students.
John Ciardi
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The thing about cats, as you may find, Is that no one knows what they have in mind.
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Who could believe an ant in theory? A giraffe in blueprint? Ten thousand doctors of what's possible Could reason half the jungle out of being.
John Ciardi