Ezra Pound Quotes

“A nation which neglects the perceptions of its artists declines. After a while it ceases to act, and merely survives.
There is probably no use in telling this to people who can't see it without being told.”

“A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.”

“And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.”

“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.”

“Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn't matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the good writer wants to be harm.”

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

“Literature is news that stays news.”

“More writers fail from lack of character than from lack of intelligence.”

“No teacher has ever failed from ignorance. That is empiric professional knowledge. Teachers fail because they cannot `handle the class'. Real education must ultimately be limited to men how insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.”

“The committed student needs to be wide awake, to look and listen closely, to slow down, scrutinize and reflect. The language of poetry is so dense, so multivalent, that it demands a concentrated act of attention — and offers its greatest rewards only to those who reread.”

“The critic who doesn't make a personal statement, in remeasurements he himself has made, is merely an unreliable critic. He is not a measurer but a repeater of other men's results. KRINO, to pick out for oneself, to choose. That's what the word means.”