A Quote by Ezra Pound
Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.
Related Quotes
Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as 'dim land of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstraction.
Probably the best way to describe my writing style is to refer you to "purple prose", which was a tag given to the early mass market magazine writers earning a half cent a word for their fiction. They had to use every adjective, verb and adverb in the English language to add word count to stories in order to feed and support families.
What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.
Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it; you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
The word 'beauty' is as easy to use as the word 'degenerate.' Both come in handy when one does or does not agree with you
The word is the Guru, The Guru is the Word, For all nectar is enshrined in the world Blessed is the word which reveal the Lord's name But more is the one who knows by the Guru's grace.
I'm showbiz-fat. It's so funny, in all the reviews that I read, no one wants to use the word 'fat' as an adjective. So I have to deal with 'dimpled-kneed,' 'hefty,' 'plus-sized,' the most obscure words you can imagine.
The primary, the fundamental, the essential purpose of the United Nations is to keep peace. Everything it does which helps prevent World War III is good. Everything which does not further that goal, either directly or indirectly, is at best superfluous.
Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny.
The word 'revolution' is a word for which you kill, for which you die, for which you send the labouring masses to their deaths; but which does not contain any content.
The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.
To use the term blind faith, is to use an adjective needlessly.
Jazz is a word they use to sell our music, but to me that word does not exist.
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
Correctitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the living use of words. It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word.
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