Ezra Pound quotes

Ezra Pound was an influential American poet and critic, recognized as a major figure in early modernist literature. His innovative use of language and promotion of fellow writers fundamentally shaped 20th-century poetry. He remains a controversial figure due to his political views and activities. Here are 145 of his quotes:

Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

Ezra Pound

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

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

Ezra Pound

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

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

Ezra Pound

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

Ezra Pound

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

Ezra Pound

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

Ezra Pound

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

Ezra Pound

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

Ezra Pound

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

Ezra Pound

Poetry must be as well written as prose.

Ezra Pound

Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists.

Ezra Pound

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

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

Ezra Pound

The temple is holy because it is not for sale.

Ezra Pound

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

Ezra Pound

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

Ezra Pound

And the days are not full enough And the nights are not full enough And life slips by like a field mouse Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

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

One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns.

Ezra Pound

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.

Ezra Pound