Ezra Pound Quotes

Speak against unconscious oppression,Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,Speak against bonds.

~ Ezra Pound

It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.

~ Ezra Pound

The Garden En robe de parade. - SamainLike a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe 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 rabbleOf 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 round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.

~ Ezra Pound

Literature is news which stays news.

~ Ezra Pound

This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.

~ 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

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

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

~ Ezra Pound

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.

~ Ezra Pound

Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

~ Ezra Pound

Literature is news that stays news.

~ Ezra Pound

Listen to me, attend me!And I will breathe into thee a soul,And thou shalt live for ever.

~ 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

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

~ Ezra Pound

Love thou thy dreamAll base love scorning,Love thou the windAnd here take warningThat 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 sognoOgni inferiore amore disprezzando,Il vento amaEd accorgiti quiChe 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 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 gameAnd died, there's nothing in it.

~ 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

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 seemTo mock me now, all night, all night, andHave I strayed among the cliffs hereThey say, some day I'll fallDown through the sea-bit fissures, and no moreKnow the warm cloak of sun, or batheThe 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 slopAnd how the wind doth ramm!Sing: Goddamm.Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,An ague hath my ham.Freezeth river, turneth liverDamn you, sing: Goddamm.Goddamm, Goddamm, tis why I am,Goddamm.So 'gainst the winter's balmSing 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

Literature is news that stays news.

~ 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

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

~ Ezra Pound

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

~ 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