54 Quotes & Sayings By Ezra Pound

The Garden En robe de parade. - SamainLike a skein of loose silk blown against a wall She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens, And she is dying piece-mealof a sort of emotional anaemia. And round about there is a rabble Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. They shall inherit the earth. In her is the end of breeding. Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. She would like some one to speak to her, And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion. . Ezra Pound

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably. Ezra Pound

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn't matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the good writer wants to be harm. Ezra Pound

The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the damned and despised litterati..when their very medium, the very essence of their work, the application of word to thing goes rotten, i.e. becomes slushy and inexact, or excessive or bloated, the whole machinery of social and of individual thought and order goes to pot. Ezra Pound

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth. Ezra Pound

A great spirit has been amongst us, and a great artist is gone. Ezra Pound

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents. Ezra Pound

Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music. Ezra Pound

Love thou thy dream All base love scorning, Love thou the wind And here take warning That dreams alone can truly be, For 'tis in dream I come to thee. Ezra Pound, The Songtrad. Ungaretti:Ama il tuo sogno Ama il tuo sogno Ogni inferiore amore disprezzando, Il vento ama Ed accorgiti qui Che i sogni solo possono veramente essere, Perciò in sogno a raggiungerti m’avvio. Ezra Pound

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. It was a sort of metaphor, but she was not using it as ornamentation. Ezra Pound

Great Literature is simply language charged to the utmost with meaning Ezra Pound

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree. Ezra Pound

The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity. Ezra Pound

No one knows, at sight a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it. Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me: Don't kick against the pricks, Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your game And died, there's nothing in it. Ezra Pound

Literature is language charged with meaning Ezra Pound

When you start searching for ‘pure elements’ in literature you will find that literature has been created by the following classes of persons: Inventors. Men who found a new process, or whose extant work gives us the first known example of a process. The masters. Men who combined a number of such processes, and who used them as well as or better than the inventors. The diluters. Men who came after the first two kinds of writer, and couldn’t do the job quite as well. Good writers without salient qualities. Men who are fortunate enough to be born when the literature of a given country is in good working order, or when some particular branch of writing is ‘healthy’. For example, men who wrote sonnets in Dante’s time, men who wrote short lyrics in Shakespeare’s time or for several decades thereafter, or who wrote French novels and stories after Flaubert had shown them how. Writers of belles-lettres. That is, men who didn’t really invent anything, but who specialized in some particular part of writing, who couldn’t be considered as ‘great men’ or as authors who were trying to give a complete presentation of life, or of their epoch. The starters of crazes. Until the reader knows the first two categories he will never be able ‘to see the wood for the trees’. He may know what he ‘likes’. He may be a ‘compleat book-lover’, with a large library of beautifully printed books, bound in the most luxurious bindings, but he will never be able to sort out what he knows to estimate the value of one book in relation to others, and he will be more confused and even less able to make up his mind about a book where a new author is ‘breaking with convention’ than to form an opinion about a book eighty or a hundred years old. He will never understand why a specialist is annoyed with him for trotting out a second- or third-hand opinion about the merits of his favourite bad writer. . Ezra Pound

Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it. 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

Usury is the cancer of the world, which only the surgeon's knife of fascism can cut out of the life of the nations. Ezra Pound

In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries. Ezra Pound

Two mystic states can be dissociated: the ecstatic-beneficent-and-benevolent, contemplation of the divine love, the divine splendour with goodwill toward others. And the bestial, namely the fanatical, the man on fire with God and anxious to stick his snotty nose into other men's business or reprove his neighbour for having a set of tropisms different from that of the fanatic's, or for having the courage to live more greatly and openly. The second set of mystic states is manifest in scarcity economists, in repressors etc. The first state is a dynamism. It has, time and again, driven men to great living, it has given them courage to go on for decades in the face of public stupidity. It is paradisical and a reward in itself seeking naught further.. perhaps because a feeling of certitude inheres in the state of feeling itself. The glory of life exists without further proof for this mystic. Ezra Pound

I wonder why the wind, even the wind doth seem To mock me now, all night, all night, and Have I strayed among the cliffs here They say, some day I'll fall Down through the sea-bit fissures, and no more Know the warm cloak of sun, or bathe The dew across my tired eyes to comfort them. They try to keep me hid within four walls. I will not stay! Ezra Pound

Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm.Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver Damn you, sing: Goddamm.Goddamm, Goddamm, tis why I am, Goddamm. So 'gainst the winter's balm Sing Goddamm, damm, sing GoddammSing Goddamm, sing Goddamm, DAMM. Ezra Pound

Artists are the antennae of the race but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists. Ezra Pound

Properly we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand. Ezra Pound

If Ford Madox Ford were placed stark naked in a room totally empty he would contrive to turn it into a mess. Ezra Pound

Utter originality is of course out of the question. Ezra Pound

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people. Ezra Pound

If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval. Ezra Pound

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression. Ezra Pound

If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point. Ezra Pound

Good art however 'immoral' is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise. Ezra Pound

If a patron buys from an artist who needs money, the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates. Ezra Pound

All great art is born of the metropolis. Ezra Pound

Either move or be moved. Ezra Pound

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding. Ezra Pound

Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music. Ezra Pound

Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture. Ezra Pound

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will. Ezra Pound

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary. Ezra Pound