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.”

“Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.”

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

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

“Wars are made to make debt.”

“With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.”

“Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.”

“The Garden En robe de parade. - SamainLike a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,And she is dying piece-mealof a sort of emotional anaemia.And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.In her is the end of breeding.Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.She would like some one to speak to her,And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.”

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

“All great art is born of the metropolis.”

“A general loathing of a gang or sect usually has some sound basis in instinct.”

“Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.”

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

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

“The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.”

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

“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.”

“The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.”

“A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.”

“Love thou thy dreamAll base love scorning,Love thou the windAnd here take warningThat dreams alone can truly be,For 'tis in dream I come to thee.Ezra Pound, The Songtrad. Ungaretti:Ama il tuo sogno Ama il tuo sognoOgni inferiore amore disprezzando,Il vento amaEd accorgiti quiChe i sogni solo possono veramente essere,Perciò in sogno a raggiungerti m’avvio.”