Ezra Pound Quotes - Page 6

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

  Ezra Pound

  Age, Literature, Language

  John Patrick Sullivan, Ezra Pound, Sextus Propertius (1964). “Ezra Pound and Sextus Propertius: a study in creative translation”

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

  Ezra Pound

  Book, Reading, Men

  Ezra Pound (1970). “The Cantos of Ezra Pound”, p.447, New Directions Publishing

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• Discoveries are made by gluttons and addicts. The man who forgets to eat and sleep has an appetite for fact, for interrelations among causes.

  Ezra Pound

  Sleep, Men, Discovery

  Ezra Pound (1952). “Guide to Kulchur”, p.100, New Directions Publishing

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• Bureaucrats are a pox. They are supposed to be necessary. Certain chemicals in the body are supposed to be necessary to life, but cause death the moment they increase beyond a suitable limit

  Ezra Pound

  Causes, Body, Pox

  Ezra Pound (1960). “Impact: essays on ignorance and the decline of American civilization”

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• America, my country, is almost a continent and hardly yet a nation.

  Ezra Pound

  Country, America, Continents

  Patria Mia pt. 1, sec. 1 (1950)

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• In verse one can take any damn constant one likes, one can alliterate, or assone, or rhyme, or quant, or smack, only one MUST leave the other elements irregular.

  Ezra Pound

  Poetry, Elements, Likes

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• 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.

  Ezra Pound

  Marriage, Art, Tea

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• If a patron buys from an artist who needs money (needs money to buy tools, time, food), the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Money, Needs

  Ezra Pound, Timothy Materer (1991). “The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn: 1915–1924”, p.2, Duke University Press

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• To break the pentameter, that was the first heave

  Ezra Pound

  Poetry, Firsts, Break

  Ezra Pound (1996). “The Cantos of Ezra Pound”, p.538, New Directions Publishing

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• A little light, like a rushlight / to lead back to splendour.

  Ezra Pound

  Light, Littles, Splendour

  Ezra Pound (1996). “The Cantos of Ezra Pound”, p.817, New Directions Publishing

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

  Ezra Pound

  Book, Men

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• No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.

  Ezra Pound

  Real, Book, Writing

  Ezra Pound (1918). “Pavannes and Divisions”

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• Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea.

  Ezra Pound

  Sea, Mind

  "Portrait d'une Femme" l. 1 (1916)

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• We live in an age of science and of abundance. The care and reverence for books as such, proper to an age when no book was duplicated until someone took the pains to copy it out by hand, is obviously no longer suited to ’the needs of society’, or to the conservation of learning. The weeder is supremely needed if the Garden of the Muses is to persist as a garden.

  Ezra Pound

  Pain, Book, Garden

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.17, New Directions Publishing

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• The man who fears war and squats opposing
  My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
  But is fit only to rot in womanish peace

  Ezra Pound

  Fear, War, Men

  Ezra Pound, Richard Sieburth (2010). “New Selected Poems and Translations”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

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

  Ezra Pound

  Black, Crowds, Faces

  "In a Station of the Metro" l. 1 (1916)

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• The artist is always beginning.

  Ezra Pound

  Artist

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

  Ezra Pound

  Suicide, Suicidal, Literature

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• '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.

  Ezra Pound

  Work, Night, Views

  Ezra Pound (2015). “Delphi Poetical Works of Ezra Pound (Illustrated)”, p.57, Delphi Classics

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• 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.

  Ezra Pound

  Errors, Essentials, Literature

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• Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, bad poets.

  Ezra Pound

  Poet, Not Interested

  Ezra Pound (1968). “Literary Essays of Ezra Pound”, p.437, New Directions Publishing

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• A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in the process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, People, Empires

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.34, New Directions Publishing

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• The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation, neither are they transmitted by book learning. The mystic tradition, any mystic tradition, is of a similar nature, that is, it is dependent on direct perception, a 'knowledge' as permanent as the faculty for receiving it.

  Ezra Pound

  Book, Perception, Receiving

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• 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.

  Ezra Pound

  Art, Mean, Bears

  Ezra Pound (1968). “Literary Essays of Ezra Pound”, p.44, New Directions Publishing

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