A. E. Housman
poet, classical philologist, writer, university teacher, classical scholar
Read on Wikipedia1859 – 1936
All Quotes by A. E. Housman
“Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.”
“Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.”
“Terence, this is stupid stuff:”
“The most important truth which has ever been uttered, and the greatest discovery ever made in the moral world.”
“The house of delusions is cheap to build, but draughty to live in, and ready at any instant to fall.”
“Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.”
“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.”
“Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.”
“Nature, not content with denying to Mr — the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing.”
“A man who possesses common sense and the use of reason must not expect to learn from treatises or lectures on textual criticism anything that he could not, with leisure and industry, find out for himself. What the lectures and treatises can do for him is to save him time and trouble by presenting to him immediately considerations which would in any case occur to him sooner or later.”
“A textual critic engaged upon his business is not at all like Newton investigating the motions of the planets: he is much more like a dog hunting for fleas. If a dog hunted for fleas on mathematical principles, basing his researches on statistics of area and population, he would never catch a flea except by accident.”
“The difference between an icicle and a red-hot poker is really much slighter than the difference between truth and falsehood or sense and nonsense; yet it is much more immediately noticeable and much more universally noticed, because the body is more sensitive than the mind.”
“Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain.”
“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.”
“And, what is worse, the reader often shares the writer's prejudices, and is far too well pleased with his conclusions to examine either his premises or his reasoning. Stand on a barrel in the streets of Bagdad, and say in a loud voice, 'Twice two is four, and ginger is hot in the mouth, therefore Mohammed is the prophet of God', and your logic will probably escape criticism; or, if anyone should by chance criticise it, you could easily silence him by calling him a Christian dog.”
“To be a textual critic requires aptitude for thinking and willingness to think; and though it also requires other things, those things are supplements and cannot be substitutes. Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head.”
“Loveliest of trees, the cherry nowIs hung with bloom along the bough.”
“Now, of my threescore years and ten,To see the cherry hung with snow.”
“Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;There'll be time enough to sleep.”
“Lovers lying two and twoNever turns him to the bride.”
“When I was one-and-twentyBut not your heart away."”
“When I was one-and-twentyAnd oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.”
“His folly has not fellowHis heart and soul away.”
“Oh, when I was in love with youAm quite myself again.”
“To-day, the road all runners come,Townsman of a stiller town.”
“And silence sounds no worse than cheersAfter earth has stopped the ears.”
“The bells they sound on BredonI hear you, I will come.”
“They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.”
“But from my grave across my browBeneath the suffocating night.”
“There, like the wind through woods in riot,Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.”
“From far, from eve and morningBlew hither; here am I.”
“Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,That will not shower on me.”
“Into my heart an air that killsAnd cannot come again.”
“Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.”
“Far in a western brooklandBy pools I used to know.”
“There, by the starlit fences,About the glimmering weirs.”
“With rue my heart is ladenIn fields where roses fade.”
“Now hollow fires burn out to black,There's nothing but the night.”
“Oh many a peer of England brewsFor fellows whom it hurts to think.”
“Therefore, since the world has stillAnd train for ill and not for good.”
“The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowersPass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May.”
“We for a certainty are not the firstWhatever brute and blackguard made the world.”
“The troubles of our proud and angry dustShoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.”
“Could man be drunk for everTheir hands upon their hearts.”
“The laws of God, the laws of man,Laws for themselves and not for me.”
“And how am I to face the oddsIn a world I never made.”
“He stood, and heard the steepleIts strength, and struck.”
“These, in the day when heaven was falling,And saved the sum of things for pay.”
“Tell me not here, it needs not saying,And I knew all her ways.”
“Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act...The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach. Houseman's test for great poetry.”
“Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out … and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.”
“Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.”
“They say my verse is sad: no wonder.And I am not.”
“Hope lies to mortalsWas never mine.”
“The rainy Pleiads wester,And I lie down alone.”
“All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.”
“Who made the world I cannot tell; I never soiled with such a deed.”
“Here dead we lie because we did not chooseBut young men think it is, and we were young.”
“We now to peace and darknessAnd wilt cast forth no more.”
“Good-night; ensured release,And heaven endures.”