Ezra Pound

This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.

If Ford Madox Ford were placed stark naked in a room totally empty he would contrive to turn it into a mess.

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.

Literature is news that stays news.

Artists are the antennae of the race but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists.

Literature is news which stays news.

L'artGreen arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.

And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.

Winter is icummen in,Lhude sing Goddamm,Raineth drop and staineth slopAnd how the wind doth ramm!Sing: Goddamm.Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,An ague hath my ham.Freezeth river, turneth liverDamn you, sing: Goddamm.Goddamm, Goddamm, tis why I am,Goddamm.So 'gainst the winter's balmSing Goddamm, damm, sing GoddammSing Goddamm, sing Goddamm,DAMM.

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.

It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.

Speak against unconscious oppression,Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,Speak against bonds.

I wonder why the wind, even the wind doth seemTo mock me now, all night, all night, andHave I strayed among the cliffs hereThey say, some day I'll fallDown through the sea-bit fissures, and no moreKnow the warm cloak of sun, or batheThe dew across my tired eyes to comfort them.They try to keep me hid within four walls.I will not stay!

Two mystic states can be dissociated: the ecstatic-beneficent-and-benevolent, contemplation of the divine love, the divine splendour with goodwill toward others.And the bestial, namely the fanatical, the man on fire with God and anxious to stick his snotty nose into other men's business or reprove his neighbour for having a set of tropisms different from that of the fanatic's, or for having the courage to live more greatly and openly.The second set of mystic states is manifest in scarcity economists, in repressors etc.The first state is a dynamism. It has, time and again, driven men to great living, it has given them courage to go on for decades in the face of public stupidity. It is paradisical and a reward in itself seeking naught further... perhaps because a feeling of certitude inheres in the state of feeling itself. The glory of life exists without further proof for this mystic.

In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.

Usury is the cancer of the world, which only the surgeon's knife of fascism can cut out of the life of the nations.

If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good

Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.