It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra PoundRead
I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that one's perspective may be influenced by the company one keeps.
Ezra Pound's quote implies that a person's sanity or rationality can be challenged or questioned in the presence of others who are equally irrational or emotional. It reflects the idea that perceptions of normalcy and sanity are subjective and heavily influenced by social interactions and the environment. If surrounded by individuals who exhibit erratic behavior, one may start to question their own beliefs and mental state, highlighting the social nature of our understanding of sanity and reality.
Themes
SanityPerceptionSocial InfluenceMadnessEnvironment
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be shared in a discussion about mental health and social pressures.
More from Ezra Pound
All quotes βThe ant's a centaur in his dragon world. 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 In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.
Ezra PoundRead
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
Ezra PoundRead
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
Ezra PoundRead
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
Ezra PoundRead
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
Ezra PoundRead
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It is still open for me, as well as you, to regulate my behavior, by my experience of past events.
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My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.
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The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
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