Ezra Pound Quotes - Page 6

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• I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.

  Ezra Pound

  Suicide, Suicidal, Literature

  11 Copy quote

• In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities; I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality--the principle of order versus the split atom.

  Ezra Pound

  Order, Ideas, Rose

  4 Copy quote

• From the colour the nature And by the nature the sign! Beatific spirits welding together As in one ash-tree in Ygdrasail.

  Ezra Pound

  Tree, Religion, Together

  Ezra Pound (1996). “The Cantos of Ezra Pound”, p.625, New Directions Publishing

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• The rustling of the silk is discontinued, Dust drifts over the courtyard, There is not sound of footfall, and the leaves Scurry into heaps and lie still, And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them: A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.

  Ezra Pound

  Death, Lying, Heart

  Ezra Pound (2015). “Delphi Poetical Works of Ezra Pound (Illustrated)”, p.468, Delphi Classics

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• small talk comes from small bones

  Ezra Pound

  Bones, Small Talk

  Ezra Pound, Richard Sieburth (2010). “New Selected Poems and Translations”, p.99, New Directions Publishing

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

  Ezra Pound

  Believe, Views, Church Music

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

  Ezra Pound

  History, Literature, Checks

  ABC of Reading (1934) ch. 1

  7 Copy quote

• A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in the process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, People, Empires

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.34, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.

  Ezra Pound

  Hope, Men, Civilization

  Ezra Pound (1952). “Guide to Kulchur”, p.144, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Errors, Essentials, Literature

  9 Copy quote

• The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.

  Ezra Pound

  Degrees, Language, Form

  Sophocles, Ezra Pound, Rudd Fleming, Carey Perloff (1990). “Elektra”, p.17, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• Our own consciousness is incapable of having produce the universe. God, therefore, exists. That is to say, there is no reason for not applying the term God, Theos, to the intimate essence

  Ezra Pound

  Essence, Consciousness, Reason

  7 Copy quote

• I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Criticism, Literature

  Ezra Pound (1991). “Ezra Pound's Poetry and Prose: 1920-1927, C522-C599a”

  8 Copy quote

• The critic who doesn't make a personal statement, in remeasurements he himself has made, is merely an unreliable critic. He is not a measurer but a repeater of other men's results. KRINO, to pick out for oneself, to choose. That's what the word means.

  Ezra Pound

  Mean, Men, Made

  Ezra Pound (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.22, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• Take the serious side of Disney, the Confucian side of Disney. It's in having taken an ethoswhere you have the values of courage and tenderness asserted in a way that everybody can understand. You have got an absolute genius there. You have got a greater correlation of nature than you have had since the time of Alexander the Great.

  Ezra Pound

  Taken, Genius, Way

  6 Copy quote

• And the betrayers of language ...... n and the press gang And those who had lied for hire; The perverts, the perverters of language, the perverts, who have set money-lust Before the pleasures of the senses; howling, as of a hen-yard in a printing-house, the clatter of presses, the blowing of dry dust and stray paper, foetor, sweat, the stench of stale oranges.

  Ezra Pound

  Dust, Sweat, Orange

  Ezra Pound, Richard Sieburth (2010). “New Selected Poems and Translations”, p.152, New Directions Publishing

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• Objectivity and again objectivity, and expression: no hindside-before-ness, no straddled adjectives (as "addled mosses dank"), no Tennysonianness of speech; nothing-nothing that you couldn't, in some circumstance, in the stress of some emotion, actually say.

  Ezra Pound

  Stress, Objectivity, Expression

  Letter to Harriet Monroe, Jan. 1915

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ezra Pound

  Giving Up, Boys, Men

  'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley' (1920) 'Mr Nixon'

  4 Copy quote

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

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Real, Sculpture

  69 Copy quote

• No teacher has ever failed from ignorance. That is empiric professional knowledge. Teachers fail because they cannot `handle the class.' Real education must ultimately be limited to men how INSIST on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.

  Ezra Pound

  Teacher, Real, Ignorance

  ABC of Reading (1934) ch. 8

  6 Copy quote

• Bureaucrats are a pox. They are supposed to be necessary. Certain chemicals in the body are supposed to be necessary to life, but cause death the moment they increase beyond a suitable limit

  Ezra Pound

  Causes, Body, Pox

  Ezra Pound (1960). “Impact: essays on ignorance and the decline of American civilization”

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• What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage Whose world, or mine or theirs or is it of none? First came the seen, then thus the palpable Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell. What thou lovest well is thy true heritage.

  Ezra Pound

  Elysium, Heritage, World

  Cantos no. 81, l. 134 (1948)

  53 Copy quote

• Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Agents, Way

  Ezra Pound (1968). “Literary Essays of Ezra Pound”, p.6, New Directions Publishing

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• The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.

  Ezra Pound

  Artist, Giving, Doe

  Ezra Pound (1950). “Patria Mia”, Chicago, Seymour

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• Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

  Ezra Pound

  Stars, Squares, Satisfaction

  Ezra Pound (1992). “A Walking Tour in Southern France: Ezra Pound Among the Troubadours”, p.112, New Directions Publishing

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