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Quotes from ABC of Reading — Ezra Pound

1885–1972 United States

← All quotes by Ezra Pound

8 quotes

Real education must ultimately be limited to one who INSISTS on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.

ABC of Reading (1934)

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

ABC of Reading (1934)

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

ABC of Reading (1934)

Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.

ABC of Reading (1934)

Literature is news that STAYS news.

ABC of Reading (1934)

The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets literature decay than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts.

ABC of Reading (1934)

The author's conviction on this day of the New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.

ABC of Reading (1934)

AT ABOUT THIS POINT the weak-hearted reader usually sits down in the road, removes his shoes and weeps that he 'is a bad linguist' or that he or she can't possibly learn all those languages. One has to divide the readers who want to be experts from those who do not, and divide, as it were, those who want to see the world from those who merely want to know WHAT PART OF IT THEY LIVE IN.

ABC of Reading (1934)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ezra Pound (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.