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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

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.
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Expression Human Language Sum Wisdom
The only history that matters is the history we know.
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History Known
The difference between a gun and a tree is a difference of tempo. The tree explodes every spring.
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Difference Spring Tree Weapon
Use no word that under stress of emotion you could not actually say.
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Emotion Stress Word Yourself
The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.
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Art Curiosity Letters Survive Willing
I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron, I should have been able to do better.
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Better Finding Mental Myself
A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
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Answer Balance Civilization Serious Value
Be not cheap or mediocre in desiring.
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Average Cheap Desire Mediocre
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.
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Action Curse Immediate Nation Sort Thinking
The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.
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Average Failure History Master Work
Rhythm is form cut into time.
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Form Rhythm Time
I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn’t irascible.
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Myself Racism Worth
Artists are the antennae of the race.
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Artist Race
Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.
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Debt Implement Loan Modern Old Slave Time War
The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.
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Chance Kill Oneself People Problem Reality Right War
It doesn’t matter which leg of your table you make first, so long as the table has four legs and will stand up solidly when you have finished it.
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Finish Solid Stand Table Yourself
Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.
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Essential Language Poetry
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.
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Heritage True Well
A little light, like a rushlight to lead back to splendour.
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Glamour Leadership Light
Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, bad poets.
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Bad Interest Music Poet
The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.
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Artist Category Herself Nature Paragraph Serious
Seems fairly clear that you fix a breed by LIMITING the amount of alien infiltration. You make a race by homogeneity and by avoiding in breeding, No argument has ever been sprouted against it. You like it in dogs and horses.
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Argument Avoid Clear Infiltrate Limitation Race Yourself
Rhythm must have meaning.
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Meaning One Liner Rhythm
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
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Desire Dust Forever Myself Yourself
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
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Curse Early Financial Ourselves Time
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.
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Artist Build Creation Equality Money World
A man’s hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.
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Himself Hope Man Measurement Nation Time

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

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

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Popular Authors

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