Ezra Pound: Man

Ezra Pound was American Imagist poet and critic. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Ezra Pound: 136 quotes17 likes

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

Ezra Pound

As quoted after his arrest for treason; see Treason: the story of disloyalty and betrayal in American history http://books.google.com/books?id=lXZKAAAAMAAJ&q=%E2%80%9CIf+a+man+isn%27t+willing+to+take+some+risk+for+his+opinions,+either+his+opinions+are+no+good+or+he%27s+no+good%E2%80%9D&dq=%E2%80%9CIf+a+man+isn%27t+willing+to+take+some+risk+for+his+opinions,+either+his+opinions+are+no+good+or+he%27s+no+good%E2%80%9D&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RgacUteRAZDYoATC1IDYCg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAjgU by Nathaniel Weyl (1950), p. 400

“If a man have not order within him
He can not spread order about him”

Ezra Pound The Cantos

Canto XIII
The Cantos
Context: If a man have not order within him
He can not spread order about him;
And if a man have not order within him
His family will not act with due order;
And if the prince have not order within him
He can not put order in his dominions.

“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.”

Ezra Pound

Guide to Kulchur (1938), p. 55
Variant: Man reading shd. be man intensely alive. The book shd. be a ball of light in one's hand.

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

Ezra Pound

“With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.”

Ezra Pound

“A pity that poets have used symbol and metaphor and no man learned anything from them for their speaking in figures”

Ezra Pound

Addendum for C
Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII

“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.”

Ezra Pound book ABC of Reading

Source: ABC of Reading (1934), p. 33

“Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place”

Ezra Pound The Cantos

Canto LXXXI
The Cantos

“With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
[…]
with usura
hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall
[…]
no picture is made to endure nor to live with
but it is made to sell and sell quickly”

Ezra Pound The Cantos

Canto XLV
Regarding usura, in 1972 Pound wrote in the foreword to "Selected Prose, 1909-1965":
<blockquote>"re USURY
I was out of focus, taking a symptom for a cause.
The cause is AVARICE."</blockquote>
The Cantos

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

Ezra Pound

Source: Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935), Ch. 23