A. E. Housman quotes - page 3

I rather doubt if man really has much to gain by substituting peace for strife, as you and Jesus Christ recommend. Sic notus Ulixes? do you think you can outwit the resourceful malevolence of Nature? God is not mocked, as St. Paul long ago warned the Galatians. When man gets rid of a great trouble he is easier for a while, but not for long: Nature instantly sets to work to weaken his power of sustaining trouble, and very soon seven pounds is as heavy as fourteen pounds used to be. Last Easter Monday a young woman threw herself in the Lea because her dress looked so shabby amongst the holiday crowd: in other times and countries women have been ravished by half-a-dozen dragoons and taken it less to heart. It looks to me as if the state of mankind always had been and always would be a state of just tolerable discomfort. (A. E. Housman)
The most important truth which has ever been uttered, and the greatest discovery ever made in the moral world. View quote
A. E. Housman
When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away." View quote
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. View quote
A. E. Housman
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. View quote
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. View quote
A. E. Housman
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. View quote
A. E. Housman
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. View quote
A. E. Housman
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. View quote
A. E. Housman
Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow. View quote
A. E. Housman
But from my grave across my brow Plays no wind of healing now, And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night. (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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
A. E. Housman
Far in a western brookland That bred me long ago The poplars stand and tremble By pools I used to know. View quote
A. E. Housman
With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfoot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade. View quote
A. E. Housman
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. View quote
A. E. Housman
We for a certainty are not the first Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed Whatever brute and blackguard made the world. View quote
A. E. Housman
He stood, and heard the steeple Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town. One, two, three, four, to market-place and people It tossed them down. Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck. View quote
A. E. Housman
These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. Their shoulders held the sky suspended; They stood, and earth's foundations stay; What God abandoned, these defended, And saved the sum of things for pay. View quote
A. E. Housman
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again. (A. E. Housman)
All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use. View quote
A. E. Housman
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale. View quote
A. E. Housman
Great literature should 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. View quote
A. E. Housman
The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic. View quote
A. E. Housman