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
As a kid I would get my parents to drop me off at my local library on their way to work during the summer holidays and I would walk home at night. For several years I read the children's library until I finished the children's library. Then I moved into the adult library and slowly worked my way through them.
Neil GaimanRead
There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one's mind and alter one's whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later.
George OrwellRead
Imagination grows by exercise.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
We must, I believe, start teaching our children the sanity of nonviolence much earlier.
Alice WalkerRead
Geography is the study of earth as the home of people
Yi-Fu TuanRead
I had this feeling that, somehow, we ought to be teaching not just the history of particular nations or particular regions, but the history of humanity.
David ChristianRead