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The ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.
Ezra Pound -
Yet the companions of the Muses will keep their collective nose in my books And weary with historical data, they will turn to my dance tune.
Ezra Pound
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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.
Ezra Pound -
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.
Ezra Pound -
'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.
Ezra Pound -
Don't be blinded by the theorists and a lying press.
Ezra Pound -
From the colour the nature And by the nature the sign! Beatific spirits welding together As in one ash-tree in Ygdrasail.
Ezra Pound -
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good.
Ezra Pound
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The primary pigment of poetry is the IMAGE.
Ezra Pound -
Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.
Ezra Pound -
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.
Ezra Pound -
See, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet, The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering! See, they return, one, and by one, With fear, as half-awakened; As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind, and half turn back.
Ezra Pound -
People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.
Ezra Pound -
There are few things more difficult than to appraise the work of a man suddenly dead in his youth; to disentangle promise from achievement; to save him from that sentimentalizing which confuses the tragedy of the interruption with the merit of the work actually performed.
Ezra Pound
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With Usura With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting.
Ezra Pound -
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
Ezra Pound -
Technique is the test of sincerity.
Ezra Pound -
If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
Ezra Pound -
The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.
Ezra Pound -
The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.
Ezra Pound
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This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.
Ezra Pound -
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.
Ezra Pound -
The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.
Ezra Pound -
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.
Ezra Pound