“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”
Canto LXXXI
The Cantos
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Ezra Pound68
American Imagist poet and critic 1885–1972Related quotes
“The cry of equality pulls everyone down.”
Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher
Quoted in The Observer September 13, 1987.
Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher
"Eliot and Conservatism" (p. 208)
A Political Philosophy (2006)
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet
"April", in Poems (1859)
Context: Awakener, come!
Fiing wide the gate of an eternal year,
The April of that glad new heavens and earth
Which shall grow out of these, as spring-tide grows
Slow out of winter's breast.
Let Thy wide hand
Gather us all — with none left out (O God!
Leave Thou out none!) from the east and from the west.
Loose Thou our burdens: heal our sicknesses;
Give us one heart, one tongue, one faith, one love.
In Thy great Oneness made complete and strong —
To do Thy work throughout the happy world —
Thy world, All-merciful, Thy perfect world.
Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights
Mr. Lockwood (Ch. III).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: As it spoke I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes: still it wailed, "Let me in!", and maintained its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877–1947) Ceylon-American art historian
By Ananda Coomaraswamy in "Nataraja".
George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer
From "George H. Earle, Jr., Doctor to Ailing Corporations". Munsey's Magazine (February 1910:683-691)
“Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
“Find me in the shadows, and pull the shades down until tomorrow.”
Selena Gomez (1992) American singer and actress