Cantos Quotes & Sayings

I was sitting in a plastic desk-chair contraption in an English classroom in Minnesota, tapping out the meter of lines from Pound's Cantos, wearing a baseball shirt with a small hole in the armpit. But I was also roiling with feelings and thoughts and doubts and conjectures and worries and layers of complication ... If so much happened in my head, didn't I have to conclude that it was the same way with everyone else? I had to look down again. The world was too big. — Kate Hattemer

Love descends upon our souls by the will of God and not by the demand or the plea of the individual. — Kahlil Gibran

Stars scribble on our eyes the frosty sagas, The gleaming cantos of unvanquished space. (Cape Hatteras — Hart Crane

All the dancer's gestures are signs of things, and the dance called rational, because it aptly signifies and displays something over and above the pleasure of the senses. — Saint Augustine

But truth is not the only merit that a metaphysic can possess. It may have beauty, and this is certainly to be found in Plotinus; there are passages that remind one of the later cantos of Dante's Para- diso, and of almost nothing else in literature. Now — Bertrand Russell

If but a small part of Mme. Curie's strength of character and devotion were alive in Europe's intellectuals, Europe would face a brighter future. — Albert Einstein

The Lord grant that we may all of us have not only faith in Christ, but full assurance of faith, whereby we shall trust, for the present and for the future, everything in those dear hands that were nailed to the cross for us. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Traveling is one of my great passions and something I do a lot of. — Sabrina Lloyd

Byron published the first two cantos of his epic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a romanticized account of his wanderings through Portugal, Malta, and Greece, and, as he later remarked, "awoke one morning and found myself famous." Beautiful, seductive, troubled, brooding, and sexually adventurous, he was living the life of a Byronic hero while creating the archetype in his poetry. He became the toast of literary London and was feted at three parties each day, most memorably a lavish morning dance hosted by Lady Caroline Lamb. Lady Caroline, though married to a politically powerful aristocrat who was later prime minister, fell madly in love with Byron. He thought she was "too thin," yet she had an unconventional sexual ambiguity (she liked to dress as a page boy) that he found enticing. They had a turbulent affair, and after it ended she stalked him obsessively. She famously declared him to be "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," which he was. So was she. — Walter Isaacson

He's more than just a good-looking guy and you know it. But, I thought, he doesn't have flashlight eyes or a cocky-bastard smile that can boil water or a voice from the heavens and most of all he says things like, It's only rock 'n' roll. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

Have you asked yourself why you protect me? Are you as messed up about all this as me? — Zoe Forward

I had written my master's thesis on Ezra Pound on 'The Cantos.' And don't ask me about it. I don't remember anything about it. — Sally Mann

Seek ye counsel of the aged for their eyes have looked on the faces of the years and their ears have hardened to the voices of Life. Even if their counsel is displeasing to you, pay heed to them. — Khalil Gibran

Life is brutal that way ... the loss of irrecoverable moments amid trivia and distraction. — Dan Simmons

Most critics agree with the seventeenth-century printer who gave them to the world, that the Mutabilitie Cantos seem to be part of some following book of The Faerie Queene. — Janet Spens

One of the things I could never get accustomed to in my youth was the difference I found between life and literature. — James Joyce

One of the things that was really influential early on was Ezra Pound's Cantos, one poem he worked on for 50 years. It's epic. I had a great deal of difficulty understanding it. One of the problems was you'd be reading along in English and he would move to a Chinese ideogram or French-he actually used seven different languages in a given poem. And for somebody who's not fluent in different languages it has the impact of rupturing your way of understanding something. — Richard Misrach

He was your usual man when it came to romance, which is to say he couldn't recite Baa Baa Black Sheep when sober, whereas when drunk, sixteen cantos of Byron's Don Juan was par for the course. — Tyne O'Connell

Artists hide their identities in the brushstrokes of their paintings, the verses in their cantos, and the sentences in their novels. The true face of an artist is never on his face and this is what he prefers. Others misunderstand this displaced melancholy with an absence of melancholy. — Bruce Crown

More than a needed biography of Ehrenburg ... Tangled Loyalties is a contribution of much significance to our understanding of the history of Russia in Stalin's time and of her relations with the West. — Robert C. Tucker