Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Poundwas an expatriate American poet and critic, and 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, Hugh Selwyn Mauberleyand the unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 October 1885
CityHailey, ID
CountryUnited States of America
The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.
Song in the Manner of Housman" O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera.... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera....
A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in the process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.
People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.
The intellect is a very nice whirligig toy, but how people take it seriously is more than I can understand.
The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.
Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.
Men do not understand books until they have had a certain amount of life, until they have seen and lived at least part of their contents
One measure of a civilization, either of an age or of a single individual, is what that age or person really wishes to do. A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.
Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.
There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, ''It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.''
There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight.
I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron.... I should have been able to do better.
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage.