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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
Writer
Hailey
Idaho
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
Ezra Loomis Pound
Definitions
Fit
Conforms
Rules
Irrepressible
Eternal
Structural
Certain
Freshness
Fits
Conform
Classic

More quotes by Ezra Pound

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Technique is the test of sincerity.
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I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.
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The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation. Neither are they transmitted by book learning.
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Any general statement is like a check drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.
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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.
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What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.
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Somebody said that I am the last American living the tragedy of Europe.
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The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.
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USURY is the cancer of the world, which only the surgeon’s knife of Fascism can cut out of the life of the nations.
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Poetry must be as well written as prose.
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As for literature It gives no man a sinecure. And no one knows, at sight, a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it.
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Fit for kings, formal gardens afford an earthly Elysium and the odd impression that we mere men might actually control nature for a time.
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Seems fairly clear that you fix a breed by LIMITING the amount of alien infiltration. You make a race by homogeneity and by avoiding INbreeding.... No argument has ever been sprouted against it. You like it in dogs and horses.
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Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.
Ezra Pound
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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
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One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns.
Ezra Pound
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Good art however 'immoral' is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
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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Don't be blinded by the theorists and a lying press.
Ezra Pound
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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