Ezra Pound Quotes

Start the practice of self-control with some penance; begin with fasting.

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.

If I eat, I can't work. I'll eat when I'm dead.

A rich man cannot enjoy a sound mind nor a sound body without exercise and abstinence; and yet these are truly the worst ingredients of poverty.

There’s a difference between fasting for a week and starving for a week.

It dawned upon me that fasting could be made as powerful a weapon of indulgence as of restraint

If man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do. If, for instance, Siddhartha had not learned to fast, he would have had to seek some kind of work today, either with you, or elsewhere, for hunger would have driven him. But as it is, Siddhartha can wait calmly. He is not impatient, he is not in need, he can ward off hunger for a long time and laugh at it. Therefore, fasting is useful, sir.

There was no sacrifice in acting for me, even when I was starving in New York. I went three days without eating. Charlie Bronson and I sold blood for $5 so that we could eat.

A guy I interviewed for Hard Times says, "What do I remember about the Great Depression? That I was hungry, that's all." Elemental things.

A man with money to pay for a meal can talk about hunger without demeaning himself. ... But for a man with no money hunger is a disgrace.

A poor man defended himself when charged with stealing food to appease the cravings of hunger, saying, the cries of the stomach silenced those of the conscience.

For the first time the peasant has seen real freedom - freedom to eat his bread, freedom from starvation.

It is bad to be poor. I shall go to the wall for bread and meat, if I neglect my business this year as well as last.

One cup of food a day changes Fabian's life completely. But this morning, about a billion people on Earth - or one out of every seven - woke up and didn't even know how to fill this cup. One out of every seven people.

I know what it's like to be hungry. I know what it's like to be homeless. I know what it's like to have to choose between breaking the law and feeding yourself. I know what it's like to take meals at shelters and at Salvation Army facilities. I know what it's like to beg for money on the streets.

To save my child, I'd rather go hungry. I got all of Ethiopia inside of me.

... a starving man doesn't ask what the meal is.

You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger.

Hunger gnawed at her empty stomach again and she said aloud: 'As God is my witness, and God is my witness, the Yankees aren't going to lick me. I'm going to live through this, and when it's over, I'm never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill - as God is my witness, I'm never going to be hungry again.

Kelly, there are people in Somalia who would die for a banana.

Lent is a fitting time for self-denial; we would do well to ask ourselves what we can give up in order to help and enrich others by our own poverty. Let us not forget that real poverty hurts: no self-denial is real without this dimension of penance. I distrust a charity that costs nothing and does not hurt.

The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads.

I had been practicing for the Depression a long time. I wasn't involved with loss. I didn't have money to lose, but in common with millions I did dislike hunger and cold.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it.

If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh (taking care of course to keep within the limits of what seems permissible to the world), we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ. When the flesh is satisfied it is hard to pray with cheerfulness or to devote oneself to a life of service which calls for much self-renunciation.