Ezra Pound

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

“A nation which neglects the perceptions of its artists declines. After a while it ceases to act, and merely survives.There is probably no use in telling this to people who can't see it without being told.”

“If anybody ever shuts you in Indiana...and you don't at least write some unconstrained something or other, I give up hope for your salvation.”

“Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.”

“When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogsI am compelled to concludeThat man is the superior animal.When I consider the curious habits of manI confess, my friend, I am puzzled”

“If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good”

“where the dead walked and the living were made of cardboard.”

“Go in fear of abstractions.”

“I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, "Mamma, can I open the light?" She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art. It was a sort of metaphor, but she was not using it as ornamentation.”

“Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. --Ezra Pound”

“What thou lovest well remains. The rest is dross.”

“what thou lovest well isthy true heritagewhat thou lovest well shallnot be reft from thee”

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”

“I desired my dust to be mingled with yoursForever and forever and forever.”

“No one knows, at sight a masterpiece.And give up verse, my boy,There's nothing in it.Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me:Don't kick against the pricks,Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your gameAnd died, there's nothing in it.”

“When the head of state of family thinks first of gouging out an income, he must perforce do it through small men; and even if they are clever at their job, if one employ such inferior characters in state and family business the tilled fields will go rack swamp and ruin and edged calamities will mount up to the full.... This is the meaning of: A state does not profit by profits - Pound's translation of Confucius”

“M'amour, m'amourwhat do I love andwhere are you?That I lost my centerfighting the worldThe Dreams clashand are shattered-and that I tried to make a paradisoterrestre.I have tried to write ParadiseDo not moveLet the wind speakthat is paradiseLet the Gods forgive what Ihave madeLet those I love try to forgivewhat I have made.”

“A great spirit has been amongst us, and a great artist is gone.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.”

“Нет такой формы банальности, которую нельзя без труда превратить в пятистопный ямб. Если человек научился считать до десяти, ему не сложно начать новую строку с каждого одиннадцатого слога или отбивать каждый второй слог с ударением.”

“You have been second always. Tragical?No. You preferred it to the usual thing:One dull man, dulling and uxorious,One average mind- with one thought less, each year.”

“I have tried to write ParadiseDo not moveLet the wind speakthat is paradise.Let the Gods forgive what Ihave madeLet those I love try to forgivewhat I have made.”

“The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.”

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”

“The critic who doesn't make a personal statement, in remeasurements he himself has made, is merely an unreliable critic. He is not a measurer but a repeater of other men's results. KRINO, to pick out for oneself, to choose. That's what the word means.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“The temple is holy because it is not for sale”

“There is the subtler music, the clear lightWhere time burns back about th'eternal embers.We are not shut from the thousand heavens:Lo, there are many gods whom we have seen,Folk of unearthly fashion, places splendid,Bulwarks of beryl and of chrysophrase.Sapphire Benacus, in thy mists and theeNature herself's turned metaphysical,Who can look at that blue and not believe?”

“What thou lovest well remains,the rest is drossWhat thou lov’st well shall not be reft from theeWhat thou lov’st well is thy true heritage”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.”

“The thought of what America would be likeIf the Classics had a wide circulationTroubles my sleep (Cantico del Sole)”

“No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.”

“No teacher has ever failed from ignorance. That is empiric professional knowledge. Teachers fail because they cannot `handle the class.' Real education must ultimately be limited to men how INSIST on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.”

“Adolf Hitler was a Jeanne d'Arc, a saint. He was a martyr.”

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

“ The Lake IsleO God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,With the little bright boxespiled up neatly upon the shelvesAnd the loose fragrant cavendishand the shag,And the bright Virginialoose under the bright glass cases,And a pair of scales not too greasy,And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing,For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,Lend me a little tobacco-shop,or install me in any professionSave this damn’d profession of writing,where one needs one’s brains all the time.”

“Song in the Manner of Housman" O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera.... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera....”

“L'artGreen arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.”

“Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are.Come, my friend, and remember that the rich have butlers and no friends,And we have friends and no butlers.(excerpt from 'The Garrett')”

“The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.”

“The eyes of this dead lady speak to meFor here was love, was not to be drowned out.And here desire, not to be kissed away.The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.”

“What thou lovest well remains, ”

“As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, When the hot water gives out or goes tepid, So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady. ”