Ezra Pound
Poet
1885-10-30
Quotes by Ezra Pound
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Love thou thy dreamAll base love scorning,Love thou the windAnd here take warningThat dreams alone can truly be,For 'tis in dream I come to thee.Ezra Pound, The Songtrad. Ungaretti:Ama il tuo sogno Ama il tuo sognoOgni inferiore amore disprezzando,Il vento amaEd accorgiti quiChe i sogni solo possono veramente essere,Perciò in sogno a raggiungerti m'avvio.
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Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.
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A great spirit has been amongst us, and a great artist is gone.
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The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.
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Listen to me, attend me!And I will breathe into thee a soul,And thou shalt live for ever.
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Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
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There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight
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With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.
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Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.
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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.
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Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn't matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the good writer wants to be harm.
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And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.
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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.
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This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.
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Literature is news which stays news.
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And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.
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L'artGreen arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.
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The Garden En robe de parade. - SamainLike a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,And she is dying piece-mealof a sort of emotional anaemia.And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.In her is the end of breeding.Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.She would like some one to speak to her,And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.
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It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
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Speak against unconscious oppression,Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,Speak against bonds.
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