Ezra Pound Quotes

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

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.

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.

Literature is language charged with meaning

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

Speak against unconscious oppression,
Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,
Speak against bonds.

Rhythm must have meaning.

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

And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.

L'art

Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.

Literature is news which stays news.

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.

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

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

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight

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

Literature is news that stays news.

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

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

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