Ezra Pound Quotes - Page 5

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• 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

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• Use no word that under stress of emotion you could not actually say.

  Ezra Pound

  Stress, Use, Emotion

  Quoted in Patricia C Willis (ed) TheComplete Poems of Marianne Moore (1986).

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• Religion I have defined as "Another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art".

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Religion, Atheism

  "Ezra Pound's Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals". Volume 10,

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• The only history that matters is the history we know.

  Ezra Pound

  Matter, Knows

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• 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)

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

  Ezra Pound

  Men, Civilization, Giving

  Ezra Pound (1952). “Guide to Kulchur”, p.137, New Directions Publishing

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• 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.

  Ezra Pound

  Time, Past, Here And There

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

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• It doesn't matter which leg of your table you make first, so long as the table has four legs and will stand up solidly when you have finished it.

  Ezra Pound

  Long, Legs, Four

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.62, New Directions Publishing

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• Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

  Ezra Pound

  Book, Reading, Power

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• And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

  Ezra Pound

  Beautiful, New York, Stars

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• 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.

  Ezra Pound

  Vacuums, Doe, Use

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

  Ezra Pound

  Men, Expression, Genius

  1918 Letter to J B Yeats, 4 Feb.

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• It is more than likely that the brain itself is, in origin and development, only a sort of great clot of genital fluid held in suspense or reserved. This hypothesis would explain the enormous content of the brain as a maker or presenter of images.

  Ezra Pound

  Imagination, Brain, Suspense

  Ezra Pound (2015). “Delphi Poetical Works of Ezra Pound (Illustrated)”, p.1208, Delphi Classics

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• The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Historical, Mediocrity

  Ezra Pound, Richard Sieburth (2005). “The Spirit of Romance”, p.5, New Directions Publishing

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• The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

  Ezra Pound

  People, Church, Literature

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• Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.

  Ezra Pound

  Book, Reading, Forever

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• Science is unpoetic only to minds jaundiced with sentiment and romanticism . . . the great masters of the past boasted all they could of it and found it magical.

  Ezra Pound

  Past, Mind, Masters

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• I would hold the rosy, slender fingers of the dawn for you.

  Ezra Pound

  Dawn, Slender, Fingers

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• 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.

  Ezra Pound

  Courage, Learning, Men

  Cantos no. 81, l. 148 (1948)

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• The artist is the antenna of the race.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Artist, Race

  Ezra Pound, Timothy Materer (1985). “Pound/Lewis: The Letters of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, the Correspondence of Ezra Pound”, p.63, New Directions Publishing

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• People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

  Ezra Pound

  Ideas, People, Judgement

  1938 Guide to Kulcher, pt.1, section1, ch.5.

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• Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase! Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later . . . some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some, pro patria, non "dulce" non "et decor" . walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, the unbelieving came home, home to a lie.

  Ezra Pound

  Fear, Lying, Believe

  'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley' (1920) 'E. P. Ode pour l'èlection de son sèpulcre' pt. 4

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

  Ezra Pound

  Nice, Intelligent, People

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• The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets its literature decay, and lets good writing meet with contempt, than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts.

  Ezra Pound

  Letting Go, Country, Children

  "Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry".

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• Fit for kings, formal gardens afford an earthly Elysium and the odd impression that we mere men might actually control nature for a time.

  Ezra Pound

  Kings, Men, Garden

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