Famous Quotes

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

John Ciardi on Poetry

More quotes about Poetry

• "All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling."

  Oscar Wilde on Poetry

• "A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

  Oscar Wilde on Poetry

• "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

  T. S. Eliot on Poetry

• "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

  Robert Frost on Poetry

• "A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."

  Robert Frost on Poetry

More quotes by John Ciardi

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

• "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."

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

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

• "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."