Quotes by Ezra Pound

About Ezra Pound:

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate US poet and critic who was a major figure in the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his development of Imagism, a movement derived from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. His best-known works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and the unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos (1917–69).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Ezra Pound

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

Ezra Pound

No verse is libre for the man who wants to do a good job.

Ezra Pound

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.

Ezra Pound

Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Ezra Pound

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.

Ezra Pound

Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

Ezra Pound

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Ezra Pound

I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.

Ezra Pound

The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.

Ezra Pound

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

Ezra Pound

A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.

Ezra Pound

I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.

Ezra Pound

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

Ezra Pound

The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.

Ezra Pound

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

Ezra Pound

Allow me to say that I would long since have committed suicide had desisting made me a professor of Latin.

Ezra Pound

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Ezra Pound

I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.

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.

Ezra Pound

Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn't worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.

Ezra Pound

Author Bio

  • NameEzra Pound
  • DescriptionAmerican Imagist poet and critic
  • AliasesEzra Weston Loomis Pound
  • BornOctober 30, 1885
  • DiedNovember 1, 1972
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Literary Critic; Composer; Translator; Autobiographer; Writer
  • AwardsBollingen Prize