It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra PoundRead
If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature is essential for a nation's cultural vitality.
This quote by Ezra Pound emphasizes the crucial role of literature in the health and prosperity of a nation. When a nation's literary output diminishes, it signifies a decline in cultural values, ideas, and identity, ultimately leading to societal decay and stagnation.
Themes
LiteratureCultureDeclineNationProfound
In practice
Example use cases
During a national conference on arts and education, this quote could be used to highlight the importance of supporting literature programs.
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
Similar quotes
When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.
George SaundersRead
It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.
George OrwellRead
Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!
Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyRead
The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.
Stephen KingRead
The mere imparting of information is not education.
Carter G. WoodsonRead
A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the future.
Marian Wright EdelmanRead