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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.

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
Writing
Page
Never
Popular
Pages
Reader
Slack
Secret
Habitually
Attention
Lap
Common
Whatsoever
Given
Strain

More quotes by Ezra Pound

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The book shd. be a ball of light in one's hand.
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If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point.
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Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.
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A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.
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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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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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Either move or be moved.
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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.
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Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.
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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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And in the mean time my songs will travel, And the devirginated young ladies will enjoy them when they have got over the strangeness
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The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully cultivated by the inferiority complex of the public.
Ezra Pound
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Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
Ezra Pound
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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.
Ezra Pound
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Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.
Ezra Pound
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In verse one can take any damn constant one likes, one can alliterate, or assone, or rhyme, or quant, or smack, only one MUST leave the other elements irregular.
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Don't be blinded by the theorists and a lying press.
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America, my country, is almost a continent and hardly yet a nation.
Ezra Pound
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Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.
Ezra Pound