Quotes from Ezra Pound

L'art Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.

But I am like the grass, I can not love you.

No one knows, at sight a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it. Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me: Don't kick against the pricks, Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your game And died, there's nothing in it.

And if you ask how I regret that parting: It is like the flowers falling at Spring's end Confused, whirled in a tangle. What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking, There is no end of things in the heart. I

Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.

Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into people's faces, / Will you find your lost dead among them?

What thou lovest well remains.

I wonder why the wind, even the wind doth seem To mock me now, all night, all night, and Have I strayed among the cliffs here They say, some day I'll fall Down through the sea-bit fissures, and no more Know the warm cloak of sun, or bathe The dew across my tired eyes to comfort them. They try to keep me hid within four walls. I will not stay!

Till now they send him dreams and no more deed; So doth he flame again with might for action, Forgetful of the council of the elders, Forgetful that who rules doth no more battle, Forgetful that such might no more cleaves to him So doth he flame again toward valiant doing.

Either move or be moved.

Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. Consider the discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco-Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres.

When the head of state of family thinks first of gouging out an income, he must perforce do it through small men; and even if they are clever at their job, if one employ such inferior characters in state and family business the tilled fields will go rack swamp and ruin and edged calamities will mount up to the full.... This is the meaning of: A state does not profit by profits - Pound's translation of Confucius

The Encounter" All the while they were talking the new morality Her eyes explored me. And when I rose to go Her fingers were like the tissue Of a Japanese paper napkin.

A great spirit has been amongst us, and a great artist is gone.

There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.

There is the mystery of the scattering, the fact that the people who presumably understand each other are geographically scattered. A man who fits in his milieu as Frost does, is to be considered a happy man.

Yea, and the little earth crumbles beneath our feet and we endure.

Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm. Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver Damn you, sing: Goddamm. Goddamm, Goddamm, tis why I am, Goddamm. So 'gainst the winter's balm Sing Goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm Sing Goddamm, sing Goddamm, DAMM.

Great minds have sought you--lacking someone else. You have been second always. Tragical? No. You preferred it to the usual thing

Listen to me, attend me! And I will breathe into thee a soul, And thou shalt live for ever.

Love thou thy dream All base love scorning, Love thou the wind And here take warning That dreams alone can truly be, For 'tis in dream I come to thee. Ezra Pound, The Song trad. Ungaretti: Ama il tuo sogno Ama il tuo sogno Ogni inferiore amore disprezzando, Il vento ama Ed accorgiti qui Che i sogni solo possono veramente essere, Perciò in sogno a raggiungerti m'avvio.

The real trouble with war is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.

The Sea of Glass I looked and saw a sea roofed over with rainbows, In the midst of each two lovers met and departed; Then the sky was full of faces with gold glories behind them

Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man. Gravity, a mysterious carriage of the body to conceal the defects of the mind.