Ezra Pound Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• What thou lovest well remains.

  Ezra Pound

  Elysium, Dross, Wells

  Cantos no. 81, l. 134 (1948)

  46 Copy quote

• All great art is born of the metropolis.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Cities, Born

  1913 Letter to Harriet Monroe, 7 Nov.

  71 Copy quote

• Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.

  Ezra Pound

  Squares, Giving, Mind

  9 Copy quote

• But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Artist, Should

  Ezra Pound (1980). “Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts”, p.253, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

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

  Ezra Pound

  Elysium, Heritage, Dross

  Cantos no. 81, l. 134 (1948)

  48 Copy quote

• 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

  22 Copy quote

• Utter originality is, of course, out of the question.

  Ezra Pound

  Originality, Courses

  Ezra Pound (1950). “The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941”, p.6, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• Christ can very well stand as an heroic figure. The hero need not be of wisdom all compounded. Also he is not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on to him.

  Ezra Pound

  Religion, Atheism, Heroic

  "The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941".

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ezra Pound

  Artist, Doe, Literature

  8 Copy quote

• The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Secret, Lap

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.6, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  17 Copy quote

• The difference between a gun and a tree is a difference of tempo. The tree explodes every spring.

  Ezra Pound

  Spring, Gun, Differences

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• Any damn fool can be spontaneous.

  Ezra Pound

  Fool, Spontaneous, Damn

  7 Copy quote

• The phase of the usury system which we are trying to analyze is more or less Patterson's perception that the Bank of England could have benefit of all the interest on all the money that it creates out of nothing. ... Now the American citizen can, of course, appeal to his constitution, which states that Congress shall have power to coin money or regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin. Such appeal is perhaps quixotic.

  Ezra Pound

  America, Perception, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• 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)

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

  Ezra Pound

  Definitions, Classic, Fit

  Ezra Pound (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ezra Pound

  Ignorance, Moments, Natural

  8 Copy quote

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

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Curiosity, Literature

  "A Serious Character". Book by Humphrey Carpenter, 1988.

  8 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

  16 Copy quote

• 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)

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Ezra Pound

  Elysium, Heritage, Dross

  Cantos no. 81, l. 134 (1948)

  50 Copy quote

• Poetry is a very complex art.... It is an art of pure sound bound in through an art of arbitrary and conventional symbols.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Poetry, Sound

  8 Copy quote

Page 4 of 9

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin