Quote

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.

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
Else
Harder
Wounded
Back
Fight
Elected
Never
Shall
Admiration
Anyone
Forgive
Fighting
Forgiving
Delicately
Lasts
Fingers
Vacancy
Last
Painful
Jaws
Next
Neither
Finger

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Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
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Fermentation equals civilization.
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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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A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students.
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Honesty: The ability to resist small temptations.
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The constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
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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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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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The day will happen whether or not you get up.
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The public library is the most dangerous place in town
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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.
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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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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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Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.
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You have to fall in love with hanging around words.
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Patience is the art of caring slowly.
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Spontaneous is what you get after the seventeenth draft.
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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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Fermentation and civilization are inseparable.
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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.
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