Source: ABC of Reading
Filter quotes by topic
Famous Ezra Pound Quotes
Source: Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts
“Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, bad poets.”
Source: Literary Essays of Ezra Pound
“Rhythm is form cut into time.”
Source: ABC of Reading
“Poetry is about as much a 'criticism of life' as red-hot iron is a criticism of fire.”
“What matters most is not the idea, but the capacity to believe in it completely.”
“Almost any fool can paint an academy picture, and any imbecile can shoot off a Kodak.”
Source: Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts
Source: Guide to Kulchur
Source: Ezra Pound Speaking
“Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.”
“I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.”
“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
“The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.”
Source: A Memoir of Gaudier-Brzeska
“When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.”
Source: Guide to Kulchur
Source: Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry
“No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.”
Source: ABC of Reading
“Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.”
“A general loathing of a gang or sect usually has some sound basis in instinct.”
“Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.”
“I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.”
Source: The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941
Source: Guide to Kulchur
“Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.”
Source: Ezra Pound's Poetry and Prose: 1920-1927, C522-C599a
Source: Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts
“The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.”