"Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap."
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Quote collection
Ezra Pound quotes (page 4 of 11)
216 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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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"Rhythm must have meaning."
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"Seems fairly clear that you fix a breed by LIMITING the amount of alien infiltration. You make a race by homogeneity and by avoiding INbreeding.... No argument has ever been sprouted against it. You like it in dogs and horses."
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"The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth."
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"The artist is the antenna of the race."
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"I would hold the rosy, slender fingers of the dawn for you."
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"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."
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"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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"The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully cultivated by the inferiority complex of the public."
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"No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents."
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"Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as 'dim land of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstraction."
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"Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase! Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later . . . some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some, pro patria, non "dulce" non "et decor" . walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, the unbelieving came home, home to a lie."
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"There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight"
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"Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing."
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"Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work."
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"Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear."
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"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."
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"The rustling of the silk is discontinued, Dust drifts over the courtyard, There is not sound of footfall, and the leaves Scurry into heaps and lie still, And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them: A wet leaf that clings to the threshold."
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"The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism."
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