“It is the dignity of the poet or of the composer that his product is immaterial. What he makes can go direct to the poor, to any poor man with wit to understand it. Whether it be the young Masefield treasuring his copy of Paradise Lost in a shoddy American boarding-house, or the Arab in an unfurnished desert carrying his songs, which the Emir Feisul has promised Colonel Lawrence to collect for the benefit of the Occidental student, or the Irish peasant, reputedly revelling in the beauties of exuberant language, we do not lack proofs for the democracy of the art of fine speech, as contrasted with the luxury of the painter's wares.

In the case of poetry it is the thing itself, not an oleograph or a photo-reproduction which goes to the man on the veldt, to the Ceylon planter, to the errand boy in a Manchester slum. Given the love of the thing, given an inclination to care for the best, poverty is no bar, remoteness is no bar, to possession.

On the other hand, a knowledge of pictures is confined to the people who live in a few great cities or who can afford visits to great galleries and current exhibits. All of which creates a modus of appreciation and appraisement for painting very different from the usual modus of appreciation of literature.”

— Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts p. 137