Ezra Pound Quotes
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As for literature It gives no man a sinecure. And no one knows, at sight, a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it.
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Quiet this metal! Let the manes put off their terror, let them put off their aqueous bodies with fire. Let them assume the milk-white bodies of agate. Let them draw together the bones of the metal.
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'Tis not need we know our every thought Or see the work shop where each mask is wrought Wherefrom we view the world of box and pit, Careless of wear, just so the mask shall fit And serve our jape's turn for a night or two.
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Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
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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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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 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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Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
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The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.
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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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The only history that matters is the history we know.
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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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Religion I have defined as "Another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art".
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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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I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.
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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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What counts is the cultural level.
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It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.
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Democracy is now currently defined in Europe as a 'country run by Jews,'
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A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.
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Small talk comes from small bones.
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Sovereignty inheres in the right to issue money. And the American sovereignty belongs by right to the people, and their representatives in Congress have the right to issue money and to determine the value thereof. And 120 million, 120 million suckers have lamentably failed to insist on the observation of this quite decided law. ... Now the point at which embezzlement of the nation's funds on the part of her officers becomes treason can probably be decided only by jurists, and not by hand-picked judges who support illegality.
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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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I think an alliance with Stalin's Russia is rotten.