Ezra Pound Quotes

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

Good art however 'immoral' is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I m...

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

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

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight

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

If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's n...

L'artGreen arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.

Literature is news which stays news.

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

If a patron buys from an artist who needs money, the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; ...

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

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like ...

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

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

Either move or be moved.

All great art is born of the metropolis.

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

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

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

If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system b...

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

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ...

Great Literature is simply language charged to the utmost with meaning

Love thou thy dreamAll base love scorning,Love thou the windAnd here take warningThat dreams alone c...

Utter originality is of course out of the question.

Properly we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a b...

Two mystic states can be dissociated: the ecstatic-beneficent-and-benevolent, contemplation of the d...

Winter is icummen in,Lhude sing Goddamm,Raineth drop and staineth slopAnd how the wind doth ramm!Sin...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Literature is language charged with meaning

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

The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effe...

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

The Garden En robe de parade. - SamainLike a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe walks by th...

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

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

I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, "Mamma, can I open the light?" She w...

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off ...

When you start searching for ‘pure elements’ in literature you will find that literature has been cr...

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

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

Literature is news that stays news.

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

I wonder why the wind, even the wind doth seemTo mock me now, all night, all night, andHave I straye...

No one knows, at sight a masterpiece.And give up verse, my boy,There's nothing in it.Likewise a frie...

And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They sha...

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