A List of Famous Ezra Pound Quotes By Reference

A list of quotes from Ezra Pound. Here are the best Ezra Pound quotes on various subjects. The Ezra Pound quotations list is alphabetical but can be sorted by any column. Enjoy these sayings coined by Ezra Pound. You may copy this fact-based list to build your own just like it, re-rank it to fit your opinions, then publish it to share it on Facebook, Twitter or any other social sites you frequent.

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1

'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

Self-knowledge
2

'Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting, bid the world's hounds come to horn!

Ezra Pound

Fame
3

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

Civilization
4

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Ezra Pound

Books - Classics
5

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

Ezra Pound

Translation
6

A heroic figure... not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on him.

Ezra Pound

Jesus Christ
7

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

Ezra Pound

Genius
8

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

Ezra Pound

Freedom
9

All great art is born of the metropolis.

Ezra Pound

Cities and City Life
10

All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.

Ezra Pound

Despair
11

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

Ezra Pound
12

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

Ezra Pound

Generalizations
13

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.

Ezra Pound

Passion
14

AS A MIND, who the hell else is there left for me to take an interest IN??

Ezra Pound

Fascism
15

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

Ezra Pound

Arts and Artists
16

Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.

Ezra Pound

Scholars and Scholarship
17

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

Arts and Artists
18

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

Ezra Pound

Writers and Writing
19

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Ezra Pound

Literature
20

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Ezra Pound

Arts and Artists
21

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Ezra Pound

Critics and Criticism
22

I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It's listed as part of the poetic training, you know.

Ezra Pound

Bohemia
23

I dunno what my 23 infantile years in America signify. I left as soon as motion was autarchic -- I mean my motion.

Ezra Pound

Exile
24

I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.

Ezra Pound

Madness
25

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

Ezra Pound

Suicide
26

I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.

Ezra Pound

Temper
27

I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim... lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti.

Ezra Pound

Procreation
28

If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

Ezra Pound

Literature
29

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

Patronage
30

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

Heresy
31

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

Ezra Pound

Economy and Economics
32

It is difficult to write a paradise when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse. It is obviously much easier to find inhabitants for an inferno or even a purgatorio.

Ezra Pound

Paradise
33

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
34

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
35

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

Literature
36

Literature is news that stays news.

Ezra Pound

Literature
37

Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.

Ezra Pound

Complexity
38

Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think he understood.

Ezra Pound

Christian Church
39

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 clich?, not from real life.

Ezra Pound

Style
40

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

Ezra Pound

Books and Reading
41

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

Ezra Pound

Writers and Writing
42

One measure of a civilization, either of an age or of a single individual, is what that age or person really wishes to do. A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.

Ezra Pound

Hope
43

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

Ezra Pound

Ideas
44

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

Books and Reading
45

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

Ezra Pound

Education
46

Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art.

Ezra Pound

Religion
47

Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn't worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.

Ezra Pound

Techniques
48

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

Ezra Pound

Christian Church
49

The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.

Ezra Pound

Literature
50

The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.

Ezra Pound

Music
51

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

Ezra Pound

Action
52

The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.

Ezra Pound

Image
53

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

Ezra Pound

Intelligence and Intellectuals
54

The jargon of these sculptors is beyond me. I do not know precisely why I admire a green granite female, apparently pregnant monster with one eye going around a square corner.

Ezra Pound

Sculpture
55

The only chance for victory over the brainwash is the right of every man to have his ideas judged one at a time. You never get clarity as long as you have these packaged words, as long as a word is used by twenty-five people in twenty-five different ways. That seems to me to be the first fight, if there is going to be any intellect left.

Ezra Pound

Intelligence and Intellectuals
56

The real meditation is... the meditation on one's identity. Ah, voil? une chose!! You try it. You try finding out why you're you and not somebody else. And who in the blazes are you anyhow? Ah, voil? une chose!

Ezra Pound

Identity
57

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.

Ezra Pound

War
58

The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.

Ezra Pound

Race and Racism
59

There are few things more difficult than to appraise the work of a man suddenly dead in his youth; to disentangle promise from achievement; to save him from that sentimentalizing which confuses the tragedy of the interruption with the merit of the work actually performed.

Ezra Pound

Death and Dying
60

There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

Ezra Pound

Music
61

Wars are made to make debt.

Ezra Pound

War
62

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

Past
63

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

Ezra Pound

Books and Reading
64

You let me throw the bricks through the front window. You go in at the back and take the swag.

Ezra Pound

Innovation
65

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea

Ezra Pound

Showing items 1 - 25 of 65

A List of Famous Ezra Pound Quotes you can use this list to help make your own ranked list about this topic

'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.

'Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting, bid the world's hounds come to horn!

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

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

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

A heroic figure... not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on him.

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

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

All great art is born of the metropolis.

All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.

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

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

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.

AS A MIND, who the hell else is there left for me to take an interest IN??

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.

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.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It's listed as part of the poetic training, you know.

I dunno what my 23 infantile years in America signify. I left as soon as motion was autarchic -- I mean my motion.

I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.

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

I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.

If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

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.

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.

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

It is difficult to write a paradise when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse. It is obviously much easier to find inhabitants for an inferno or even a purgatorio.

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.

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.

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.

Literature is news that stays news.

Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.

Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think he understood.

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 clich?, not from real life.

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

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

One measure of a civilization, either of an age or of a single individual, is what that age or person really wishes to do. A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.

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

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.

Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art.

Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn't worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.

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

The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.

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

The jargon of these sculptors is beyond me. I do not know precisely why I admire a green granite female, apparently pregnant monster with one eye going around a square corner.

The real meditation is... the meditation on one's identity. Ah, voil? une chose!! You try it. You try finding out why you're you and not somebody else. And who in the blazes are you anyhow? Ah, voil? une chose!

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.

The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.

There are few things more difficult than to appraise the work of a man suddenly dead in his youth; to disentangle promise from achievement; to save him from that sentimentalizing which confuses the tragedy of the interruption with the merit of the work actually performed.

There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

Wars are made to make debt.

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.

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

You let me throw the bricks through the front window. You go in at the back and take the swag.

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea