Ezra Pound Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Either move or be moved.

  Ezra Pound

  Moving, Action, Moved

  46 Copy quote

• If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

  Ezra Pound

  Decay, Literature, Rehabilitation

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.32, New Directions Publishing

  38 Copy quote

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

  Ezra Pound

  Inability, Literature, Pounds

  Ezra Pound (1952). “Guide to Kulchur”, p.196, New Directions Publishing

  40 Copy quote

• And the days are not full enough And the nights are not full enough And life slips by like a field mouse Not shaking the grass

  Ezra Pound

  Night, Fields, Enough

  Ezra Pound, Lea Baechler, A. Walton Litz (1990). “Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound”, p.82, New Directions Publishing

  21 Copy quote

• Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.

  Ezra Pound

  Fighting, Flags, Nickels

  32 Copy quote

• Liberty is not a right but a duty.

  Ezra Pound

  Rights, Liberty, Duty

  Ezra Pound, Barry Ahearn (1987). “Pound/Zukofsky: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky”, p.24, New Directions Publishing

  30 Copy quote

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

  Ezra Pound

  Business, Men, Two

  14 Copy quote

• To say that a state cannot pursue its aims because there is no money, is like saying that an engineer cannot build roads, because there are no kilometers.

  Ezra Pound

  States, Aim, No Money

  17 Copy quote

• Sovereignty inheres in the right to issue money. And the American sovereignty belongs by right to the people, and their representatives in Congress have the right to issue money and to determine the value thereof. And 120 million, 120 million suckers have lamentably failed to insist on the observation of this quite decided law. ... Now the point at which embezzlement of the nation's funds on the part of her officers becomes treason can probably be decided only by jurists, and not by hand-picked judges who support illegality.

  Ezra Pound

  Hands, Law, America

  12 Copy quote

• Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.

  Ezra Pound

  Doe, Adjectives, Use

  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

  12 Copy quote

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

  Ezra Pound

  Inspirational, Hygiene, Degrees

  How to Read pt. 2 (1931)

  45 Copy quote

• The only chance for victory over the brainwash is the right of every man to have his ideas judged one at a time. You never get clarity as long as you have these packaged words, as long as a word is used by twenty-five people in twenty-five different ways. That seems to me to be the first fight, if there is going to be any intellect left.

  Ezra Pound

  Fighting, Men, Intelligent

  71 Copy quote

• When words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.

  Ezra Pound

  Fall, Kingdoms, Empires

  Ezra Pound (1970). “A Memoir of Gaudier-Brzeska”, p.114, New Directions Publishing

  11 Copy quote

• Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.

  Ezra Pound

  Men, Simplicity, Simple Life

  1938 Guide to Kulcher, pt.3, section 5, ch.19.

  11 Copy quote

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

  Ezra Pound

  Genius, Inferiority, Madness

  16 Copy quote

• Don't be blinded by the theorists and a lying press.

  Ezra Pound

  Lying, Blinded, Theorists

  20 Copy quote

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

  Ezra Pound

  Ideas, Energy, Vortex

  84 Copy quote

• I did not enter into silence. Silence captured me.

  Ezra Pound

  Silence, Captured

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron.... I should have been able to do better.

  Ezra Pound

  Should Have, Years, Able

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

• One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns.

  Ezra Pound

  Sweet, Feet, Patterns

  "Affirmations: As for Imagism". The New Age, January 1915.

  10 Copy quote

• Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.

  Ezra Pound

  Men, Criticism, Attention

  Ezra Pound (1968). “Literary Essays of Ezra Pound”, p.4, New Directions Publishing

  12 Copy quote

• What matters most is not the idea, but the capacity to believe in it completely.

  Ezra Pound

  Believe, What Matters, Ideas

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

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