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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

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Ezra Pound
Age: 87 †
Born: 1885
Born: October 30
Died: 1972
Died: November 1
Autobiographer
Composer
Economist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Radio Personality
Translator
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Hailey
Idaho
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
Ezra Loomis Pound
Fit
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Irrepressible
Eternal
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Freshness
Fits
Conform
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It is better to present one image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous work. Image...that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.
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The ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.
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The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep (Cantico del Sole)
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Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
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It doesn't matter which leg of your table you make first, so long as the table has four legs and will stand up solidly when you have finished it.
Ezra Pound
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You have been second always. Tragical? No. You preferred it to the usual thing: One dull man, dulling and uxorious, One average mind- with one thought less, each year.
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There are few things more difficult than to appraise the work of a man suddenly dead in his youth to disentangle promise from achievement to save him from that sentimentalizing which confuses the tragedy of the interruption with the merit of the work actually performed.
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Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.
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In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality--the principle of order versus the split atom.
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Allow me to say that I would long since have committed suicide had desisting made me a professor of Latin.
Ezra Pound
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With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.
Ezra Pound
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The intellect is a very nice whirligig toy, but how people take it seriously is more than I can understand.
Ezra Pound
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Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.
Ezra Pound
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It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.
Ezra Pound
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The artist is the antenna of the race.
Ezra Pound
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Until you know who has lent what to whom, you know nothing whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of history, you know nothing of international wrangles.
Ezra Pound
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What thou lovest well remains.
Ezra Pound
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There is no topicmore soporific and generally boring than the topic of Ireland as Ireland, as a nation.
Ezra Pound
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The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.
Ezra Pound
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The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.
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