A. E. Housman Quotes

112 Sourced Quotes

The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Now I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me.

A. E. Housman
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high, we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

A. E. Housman
Why, if 'tis dancing you would be, There's brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man. Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world's not.

A. E. Housman
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.

A. E. Housman
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither; here am I.

A. E. Housman
The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic. His opinions are determined not by his reason — 'the bulk of mankind' says Swift 'is as well qualified for flying as for thinking' — but by his passions; and the faintest of all human passions is the love of truth. He believes that the text of ancient authors is generally sound, not because he has acquainted himself with the elements of the problem, but because he would feel uncomfortable if he did not believe it; just as he believes, on the same cogent evidence, that he is a fine fellow, and that he will rise again from the dead.

A. E. Housman
I still go up my 44 stairs two at a time, but that is in hopes of dropping dead at the top.

A. E. Housman
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.

A. E. Housman
My heart always warms to people who do not come to see me, especially Americans, to whom it seems to be more of an effort.

A. E. Housman
Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
That will not shower on me.

A. E. Housman
It is supposed that there has been progress in the science of textual criticism, and the most frivolous pretender has learned to talk superciliously about "the old unscientific days". The old unscientific days are everlasting; they are here and now; they are renewed perennially by the ear which takes formulas in, and the tongue which gives them out again, and the mind which meanwhile is empty of reflexion and stuffed with self-complacency.

A. E. Housman
Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

A. E. Housman
Nature, not content with denying to Mr — the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing.

A. E. Housman
Shot? so quick, so clean an ending?
Oh that was right, lad, that was brave.

A. E. Housman
Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.

A. E. Housman
Look not in my eyes, for fear
They mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
And love it and be lost like me.

A. E. Housman
To think that two and two are four And neither five nor three The heart of man has long been sore And long 'tis like to be.

A. E. Housman
I sought them far and found them, The sure, the straight, the brave, The hearts I lost my own to, The souls I could not save They braced their belts about them, They crossed in ships the sea, They sought and found six feet of ground, And there they died for me.

A. E. Housman
Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.

A. E. Housman
They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up.

A. E. Housman
Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I am convinced that most readers, when they think they are admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the poetry of the passage before them, but something else in it, which they like better than poetry.

A. E. Housman
I think that to transfuse emotion - not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer - is the peculiar function of poetry.

A. E. Housman