Ezra Pound Quotes
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The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.
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The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.
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We live in an age of science and of abundance. The care and reverence for books as such, proper to an age when no book was duplicated until someone took the pains to copy it out by hand, is obviously no longer suited to ’the needs of society’, or to the conservation of learning. The weeder is supremely needed if the Garden of the Muses is to persist as a garden.
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Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
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It is better to present one image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous work. Image...that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.
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Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
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A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
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The eyes of this dead lady speak to me For here was love, was not to be drowned out. And here desire, not to be kissed away. The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.
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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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I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.
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The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets its literature decay, and lets good writing meet with contempt, than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts.
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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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What counts is the cultural level.
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Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.
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Religion I have defined as "Another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art".
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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 only history that matters is the history we know.
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A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.
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It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.
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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.
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The real trouble with war modern war is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.
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Small talk comes from small bones.
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There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.
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Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that multiple perception in the material of his art.