Ezra Pound Quotes

American - Poet October 30, 1885 - November 1, 1972

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

Ezra Pound

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

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

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.

Ezra Pound

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

Ezra Pound

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Ezra Pound

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.

Ezra Pound

If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

Ezra Pound

The jargon of sculptors is beyond me. I do not know precisely why I admire a green granite female, apparently pregnant monster with one eye going around a square corner.

Ezra Pound