Ezra Pound Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Pounds, Language

  Ezra Pound, Marcella Spann (1964). “Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry”, p.338, New Directions Publishing

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

  Ezra Pound

  Inspirational, Life, Art

  Ezra Pound (1965). “Ezra Pound perspectives: essays in honor of his eightieth birthday”

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• Learn of the green world what can be thy place
  In scaled invention or true artistry

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Green World, Invention

  Cantos no. 81, l. 148 (1948)

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

  Ezra Pound

  Speak, Oppression, Tyranny

  Ezra Pound (2015). “Delphi Poetical Works of Ezra Pound (Illustrated)”, p.433, Delphi Classics

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• It would be about as easy for an American to become a Chinaman or a Hindoo as for him to acquire an Englishness or a Frenchness or a European-ness that is more than half skin deep.

  Ezra Pound

  Skins, Would Be, Half

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• Glance is the enemy of vision.

  Ezra Pound

  Enemy, Vision, Glances

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

  Ezra Pound

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.100, New Directions Publishing

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• Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as 'dim land of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstraction.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Expression, Land

  Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound (2009). “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition”, p.9, Fordham Univ Press

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• The primary pigment of poetry is the IMAGE.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Poetry, Pigment

  Ezra Pound, Harriet Zinnes (1980). “Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts”, p.152, New Directions Publishing

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• What thou lovest well remains.

  Ezra Pound

  Elysium, Dross, Wells

  Cantos no. 81, l. 134 (1948)

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• What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage.

  Ezra Pound

  Elysium, Heritage, Dross

  Cantos no. 81, l. 134 (1948)

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• 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

  Dance, Literature, Atrophy

  ABC of Reading (1934) "Warning"

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• The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation. Neither are they transmitted by book learning.

  Ezra Pound

  Book, Generations, Flavor

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• The natural object is always the adequate symbol.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Adequate, Natural

  Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, Jonathan Stalling, Lucas Klein (2008). “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition”, p.9, Fordham Univ Press

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• Any damn fool can be spontaneous.

  Ezra Pound

  Fool, Spontaneous, Damn

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• Seems fairly clear that you fix a breed by LIMITING the amount of alien infiltration. You make a race by homogeneity and by avoiding INbreeding.... No argument has ever been sprouted against it. You like it in dogs and horses.

  Ezra Pound

  Dog, Horse, Race

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• Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Tree, Humanity

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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.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Men, Two

  Jefferson and/or Mussolini ch. 23 (1935)

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• 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

  Thinking, Order, Law

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• Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Fundamentals, Crafts

  Ezra Pound, Forrest Read (1967). “Pound/Joyce; the Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce: With Pound's Essays on Joyce”, p.249, New Directions Publishing

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• The real meditation is ... the meditation on one's identity. Ah, voilà une chose!! You try it. You try finding out why you're you and not somebody else. And who in the blazes are you anyhow? Ah, voilà une chose!

  Ezra Pound

  Real, Meditation, Trying

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• Literature is news that stays news.

  Ezra Pound

  Book, Inspiration, Reading

  The ABC of Reading ch. 2 (1934)

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• The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

  Ezra Pound

  Inspirational, Life, Art

  Ezra Pound (1980). “Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts”, p.147, New Directions Publishing

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• I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.

  Ezra Pound

  Dust, Forever

  Ezra Pound (1996). “Early Poems”, p.39, Courier Corporation

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• It doesn't matter which leg of your table you make first, so long as the table has four legs and will stand up solidly when you have finished it.

  Ezra Pound

  Long, Legs, Four

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.62, New Directions Publishing

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