The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.
EZRA POUNDAnd 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.
More Ezra Pound Quotes
-
-
The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
EZRA POUND -
I did not enter into silence. Silence captured me.
EZRA POUND -
To say that a state cannot pursue its aims because there is no money, is like saying that an engineer cannot build roads, because there are no kilometers.
EZRA POUND -
If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
EZRA POUND -
Christ can very well stand as an heroic figure. The hero need not be of wisdom all compounded. Also he is not wholly to blame for the religion that’s been foisted on to him.
EZRA POUND -
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 -
I would hold the rosy, slender fingers of the dawn for you.
EZRA POUND -
Be not cheap or mediocre in desiring.
EZRA POUND -
Either move or be moved.
EZRA POUND -
Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.
EZRA POUND -
It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.
EZRA POUND -
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.
EZRA POUND -
Literature is news that stays news.
EZRA POUND -
The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully cultivated by the inferiority complex of the public.
EZRA POUND -
A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.
EZRA POUND






