Any general statement is like a check drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it. Ezra Pound More Quotes by Ezra Pound More Quotes From Ezra Pound My pawing over the ancients and semi-ancients has been one struggle to find out what has been done, once and for all, better than it can ever be done again, and to find out what remains for us to do, and plenty does remain, for if we still feel the same emotions as those who launched a thousand ships, it is quite certain that we came on these feelings differently, through different nuances, by different intellectual gradations. Each age has its own abounding gifts yet only some ages transmute them into matters of duration. Ezra Pound intellectual struggle feelings Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, bad poets. Ezra Pound not-interested poet I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron.... I should have been able to do better. Ezra Pound able should-have years A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness. Ezra Pound classic fit definitions I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever. Ezra Pound dust forever What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage Ezra Pound elysium dross heritage A general loathing of a gang or sect usually has some sound basis in instinct. Ezra Pound loathing gang sound The intellect is a very nice whirligig toy, but how people take it seriously is more than I can understand. Ezra Pound nice intelligent people If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval. Ezra Pound church-music views believe No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life. Ezra Pound real writing book Usura slayeth the child in the womb It stayeth the young man's courting It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth between the young bride and her bridegroom Ezra Pound bed men children A crowd pagan as ever imperial Rome was, eager, careless, with an animal vigour unlike that of any European crowd that I have ever looked at. Ezra Pound rome new-york animal Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea. Ezra Pound sea mind What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage Whose world, or mine or theirs or is it of none? First came the seen, then thus the palpable Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell. What thou lovest well is thy true heritage. Ezra Pound elysium heritage world Art is to be admired rather than explained. The jargon of these sculptors is beyond me. I do not precisely know why I admire a green granite, female, apparently pregnant monster with one eye going around a square corner. Ezra Pound squares eye pregnancy Haie! Haie! These were the swift to harry; These the keen-scented; These were the souls of blood. Slow on the leash, pallid the leash-men! Ezra Pound soul men blood Yet the companions of the Muses Ezra Pound data historical book Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists. Ezra Pound learning artist race I dunno what my 23 infantile years in America signify. I left as soon as motion was autarchic -- I mean my motion. Ezra Pound mean america years 'Tis not need we know our every thought Or see the work shop where each mask is wrought Wherefrom we view the world of box and pit, Careless of wear, just so the mask shall fit And serve our jape's turn for a night or two. Ezra Pound views work night
