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Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.

Ezra Pound

The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.
EZRA POUND

Attention Himself Page Popular Reading Secret Writing
Bureaucrats are a pox. They are supposed to be necessary. Certain chemicals in the body are supposed to be necessary to life, but cause death the moment they increase beyond a suitable limit.
EZRA POUND

Body Chemicals Death Limitation Moments Necessary
The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
EZRA POUND

Energy Ideas Image
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

Day Enough Night Shake
Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, bad poets.
EZRA POUND

Bad Interest Music Poet
Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.
EZRA POUND

Adjective Reveal Word
What matters most is not the idea, but the capacity to believe in it completely.
EZRA POUND

Believe Capacity Complete Ideas
The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.
EZRA POUND

Chance Kill Oneself People Problem Reality Right War
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

Ability Existence Function Literature Main Writing
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 cliché, not from real life.
EZRA POUND

Goodness Life Reality Thinking Writing
Wars are made to make debt.
EZRA POUND

Loan One Liner War
The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.
EZRA POUND

Art Curiosity Letters Survive Willing
The only history that matters is the history we know.
EZRA POUND

History Known
Poetry is a very complex art, It is an art of pure sound bound in through an art of arbitrary and conventional symbols.
EZRA POUND

Art Bound Convention Poetry Sound Symbol
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance, poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
EZRA POUND

Beginning Dance Far Music Poetry
Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry.
EZRA POUND

Artist Green Invention Learning Place True World

Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.

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Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.

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