Ezra Pound Quotes
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No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.
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All great art is born of the metropolis.
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I have tried to write Paradise Do not move Let the wind speak that is paradise. Let the Gods forgive what I have made Let those I love try to forgive what I have made.
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Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
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Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.
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Where the dead walked and the living were made of cardboard.
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With Usura With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting.
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From the colour the nature And by the nature the sign! Beatific spirits welding together As in one ash-tree in Ygdrasail.
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I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.
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Poetry is about as much a 'criticism of life' as red-hot iron is a criticism of fire.
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The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation, neither are they transmitted by book learning. The mystic tradition, any mystic tradition, is of a similar nature, that is, it is dependent on direct perception, a 'knowledge' as permanent as the faculty for receiving it.
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Song in the Manner of Housman" O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera.... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera.
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The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.
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No picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper.
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Liberty is not a right but a duty.
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Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think he understood.
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This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.
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I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, Mamma, can I open the light? She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art.
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A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.
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The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.
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And the days are not full enough And the nights are not full enough And life slips by like a field mouse Not shaking the grass.
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The primary pigment of poetry is the IMAGE.
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If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good.
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The age demanded an image Of its accelerated grimace, Something for the modern stage, Not, at any rate, an Attic grace.