There is no reason why the same man should like the same book at 18 and at 48.

Pound’s remark treats reading as a living, developmental act rather than a fixed preference. Between 18 and 48 a person’s experience, knowledge, and sensibility change; it follows that the books that once satisfied may no longer speak to the reader—or may speak differently. The line also pushes back against the idea of a stable “canon” inside an individual life: rereading can reveal growth, but it can also expose how much one’s earlier tastes were shaped by immaturity, fashion, or limited horizons. Implicitly, Pound frames literary value as relational: a book’s meaning is partly produced by the reader’s stage of life, not only by the text itself.