Ezra Pound

"Our own consciousness is incapable of having produced the universe. God, therefore, exists. That is to say, there is no reason for not applying the term God, Theos, to the intimate essence"

"Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite."

"The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation."

"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."

"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."

"Image…that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time."

"One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns."

"It is better to present one image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous work."

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

"Poetry must be as well written as prose."

"It has been complained, with some justice, that I dump my note-books on the public."

"A musician once asked Ezra Pound if there was anywhere one could get all of poetry, in the sense that one could get all of music in Bach. Pounds response was that if a person would take the trouble really to learn Greek, he could get all of it, or nearly all of it, in Homer."