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Be not cheap or mediocre in desiring.

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
I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron, I should have been able to do better.
EZRA POUND

Better Finding Mental Myself
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
Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.
EZRA POUND

Adjective Reveal Word
Use no word that under stress of emotion you could not actually say.
EZRA POUND

Emotion Stress Word Yourself
With one day’s reading a man may have the key in his hands.
EZRA POUND

Day Hands Key Man Reading
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
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
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
EZRA POUND

Desire Dust Forever Myself Yourself
Small talk comes from small bones.
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Body Bone Small Talk
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

Blame Hero Himself Religion Stand Wisdom
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

Build Money Pursue State
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
Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.
EZRA POUND

Debt Implement Loan Modern Old Slave Time War
A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.
EZRA POUND

Age Greatness Time Translation
What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.
EZRA POUND

Heritage Love True Well
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.
EZRA POUND

Action Curse Immediate Nation Sort Thinking
The temple is holy because it is not for sale.
EZRA POUND

Holy Sale Temple
Every great change is simple.
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Change Greatness One Liner Simplicity
What matters most is not the idea, but the capacity to believe in it completely.
EZRA POUND

Believe Capacity Complete Ideas
I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn’t irascible.
EZRA POUND

Myself Racism Worth
The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation. Neither are they transmitted by book learning.
EZRA POUND

Book Generation Learning Lost Transmitted
Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.
EZRA POUND

Bond Imagination Oppression Talk
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
Either move or be moved.
EZRA POUND

Choice Deep Move One Liner
Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.
EZRA POUND

Attention Criticism Pay Work Writing
Wars are made to make debt.
EZRA POUND

Loan One Liner War

Be not cheap or mediocre in desiring.

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Be not cheap or mediocre in desiring.

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