Ezra Pound Quotes (121 Quotes)

Haie Haie These were the swift to harry These the keen-scented These were the souls of blood. Slow on the leash, pallid the leash-men.

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.

The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully fostered by the inferiority complex of the public.

What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it

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

It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.

The jargon of sculptors is beyond me. I do not know precisely why I admire a green granite female, apparently pregnant monster with one eye going around a square corner.

Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

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

The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.

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.

Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but the one 'Sordello.'

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

For three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry to maintain 'the sublime' In the old sense. Wrong from the start No, hardly, but seeing he had been born In a half savage country, out of date.

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.

'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.

A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.

When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder.

But *you*, My Lord, how with your city?

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.

The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

Howe'er in mirth most magnified,
Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest,
Drear all this excellence, delights undurable!

Hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies.

We do NOT know the past in chronological sequence. It may be convenient to lay it out anesthetized on the table with dates pasted on here and there, but what we know we know by ripples and spirals eddying out from us and from our own time.

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.

May God damn for ever all who cry: Peace!

'Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting, bid the world's hounds come to horn

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

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

Two friends: a breath of the forest.

All great art is born of the metropolis.

All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.

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

The apparition of these faces in the crowd Petals on a wet, black bough.

A general loathing of a gang or sect usually has some sound basis in instinct.

She of the spear stands present.

You let me throw the bricks through the front window. You go in at the back and take the swag.

Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.

No verse is libre for the man who wants to do a good job.

The intellect is a very nice whirligig toy, but how people take it seriously is more than I can understand.

The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.

AS A MIND, who the hell else is there left for me to take an interest IN

Come, my songs, let us speak of perfection - We shall get ourselves rather disliked.

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

Winter is icumen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind cloth ramm Sing Goddamm.

Poetry must be as well written as prose.

There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.

No picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper.

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