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The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.

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.
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Ability Existence Function Literature Main Writing
Genius, is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.
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Genius Man Oneself Ordinary Sight
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.
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Compare Deserve Forever Glossary Master Necessary Reading
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.
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Better Friendship Pity Remember Rich
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
Be not cheap or mediocre in desiring.
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Average Cheap Desire Mediocre
All great art is born of the metropolis.
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Art Born Greatness Metropolis
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
Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry.
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Artist Green Invention Learning Place True World
A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.
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Age Greatness Time Translation
From the colour the nature And by the nature the sign! Beatific spirits welding together As in one ash-tree in Ygdrasail.
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Color Nature Togetherness Tree
A little light, like a rushlight to lead back to splendour.
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Glamour Leadership Light
Glance is the enemy of vision.
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Enemy One Liner Vision
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.
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Attention Himself Page Popular Reading Secret Writing
In verse one can take any damn constant one likes, one can alliterate, or assone, or rhyme, or quant, or smack, only one MUST leave the other elements irregular.
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Element Leaving Oneself Regular Rhyme
The primary pigment of poetry is the IMAGE.
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Image Poetry Primary
Either move or be moved.
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Choice Deep Move One Liner
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance, poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
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Beginning Dance Far Music Poetry
Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
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Accurate Fundamental Moral Oneself Writing
Utter originality is, of course, out of the question.
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Course Original Question
The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language.
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Human Language Sum Wisdom
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
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Charge Degree Greatness Literature Meaning Possible
Every great change is simple.
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Change Greatness One Liner Simplicity
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.
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Body Chemicals Death Limitation Moments Necessary
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.
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Art Goodness Immoral Precise True Virtue
A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.
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Build Eyes Light Reality Stay
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.
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Education Insist Limit Reality

The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.

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The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.

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Popular Authors

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