black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Liberty is not a right but a duty.

Ezra Pound

The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
EZRA POUND

Artist Craft Interest Live Modern Violence
Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are. Come, my friend, and remember that the rich have butlers and no friends, And we have friends and no butlers.
EZRA POUND

Better Friendship Pity Remember Rich
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

Art Goodness Immoral Precise True Virtue
When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
EZRA POUND

Agreement Business Man Necessary Oneself
The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.
EZRA POUND

Argument Oneself People Start Technique Truth
I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn’t irascible.
EZRA POUND

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

Education Insist Limit Reality
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
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

Alive Ball Hands Intense Light One Liner Power Reading
The artist is the antenna of the race.
EZRA POUND

Artist One Liner Race
The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.
EZRA POUND

Artist Beginning Discover Invention Worth
Rhythm is form cut into time.
EZRA POUND

Form Rhythm Time
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.
EZRA POUND

Argument Avoid Clear Infiltrate Limitation Race Yourself
Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.
EZRA POUND

Ourselves Poetry Stars Willing
There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight.
EZRA POUND

Age Book Growth Man Reason
If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
EZRA POUND

Decline Education Literature Nation
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
It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.
EZRA POUND

Artist Aware Business Humanity
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

Artist Build Creation Equality Money World
The only history that matters is the history we know.
EZRA POUND

History Known
Small talk comes from small bones.
EZRA POUND

Body Bone Small Talk
I would hold the rosy, slender fingers of the dawn for you.
EZRA POUND

Fingers Hold Morning Myself
To break the pentameter, that was the first heaven.
EZRA POUND

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

Act Imply People Point Quiet Ring Symbol
Artists are the antennae of the race.
EZRA POUND

Artist Race
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
A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.
EZRA POUND

Build Eyes Light Reality Stay

Liberty is not a right but a duty.

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Liberty is not a right but a duty.

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