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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.

— Ezra Pound ABC of Reading (1934)

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More quotes by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935)

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.

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.

Guide to Kulchur (1938)

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

All Ezra Pound quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ezra Pound (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.