A.E. Housman Quotes (69 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

From a list of insults drafted by A E Housman, and posthumously published in Laurence Housman's A. E. H. (1937) pp. 89-90. The name was left blank in the original, but was intended to be filled in and used when a suitable subject should turn up.

“Far in a western brookland
That bred me long ago
The poplars stand and tremble
By pools I used to know.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 52, st. 1.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“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.E. Housman

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

“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 book A Shropshire Lad

No. 48, st. 1.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings
All desired and timely things.
All whom morning sends to roam,
Hesper loves to lead them home.
Home return who him behold,
Child to mother, sheep to fold,
Bird to nest from wandering wide:
Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.”

A.E. Housman

No. 24 ("Epithalamium"), st. 3. Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

“I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.”

A.E. Housman

A remark made in conversation, according to Grant Richards Housman 1897-1936 (1942) p. 100.
Attributed

“And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 19 ("To an Athlete Dying Young"), st. 4.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“The bells they sound on Bredon
And still the steeples hum.
"Come all to church, good people," —
Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 21, st. 7.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“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 book A Shropshire Lad

No. 32.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“There, by the starlit fences,
The wanderer halts and hears
My soul that lingers sighing
About the glimmering weirs.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 52, st. 4.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“Good-night; ensured release,
Imperishable peace,
Have these for yours,
While sea abides, and land,
And earth's foundations stand,
And heaven endures.”

A.E. Housman

No. 48 ("Parta Quies"), st. 1. More Poems http://www.kalliope.org/vaerktoc.pl?vid=housman/1936 (1936)

“Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.”

A.E. Housman

Additional Poems, No. 18, st. 1 (1937).

“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

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

“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.”

A.E. Housman

No. 15 ("Eight O'Clock"). Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

“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.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 2, st. 2-3.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“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 book A Shropshire Lad

No. 39, st. 3.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain.”

A.E. Housman

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

“Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 12, st. 4.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“We now to peace and darkness
And earth and thee restore
Thy creature that thou madest
And wilt cast forth no more.”

A.E. Housman

No. 47 ("For My Funeral"), st. 3. More Poems http://www.kalliope.org/vaerktoc.pl?vid=housman/1936 (1936)

“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.”

A.E. Housman

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

“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.”

A.E. Housman

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

“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 book A Shropshire Lad

No. 30, st. 4.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
What tune the enchantress plays
In aftermaths of soft September
Or under blanching mays,
For she and I were long acquainted
And I knew all her ways.”

A.E. Housman

No. 40, st. 1. Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

“The most important truth which has ever been uttered, and the greatest discovery ever made in the moral world.”

A.E. Housman

Referring to Luke 17:33, 'Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life shall find it' (the wording used by Housman).

“Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not to left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 60.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“The house of delusions is cheap to build, but draughty to live in, and ready at any instant to fall.”

A.E. Housman

"Introductory Lecture" delivered on October 3, 1892 at University College, London.

“Here dead we lie because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.”

A.E. Housman

No. 36. More Poems http://www.kalliope.org/vaerktoc.pl?vid=housman/1936 (1936)

“When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away."”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 13, st. 1.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“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 book A Shropshire Lad

No. 19 ("To an Athlete Dying Young"), st. 2.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“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.”

A.E. Housman

The Name and Nature of Poetry

“They say my verse is sad: no wonder.
Its narrow measure spans
Rue for eternity, and sorrow
Not mine, but man's.

This is for all ill-treated fellows
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not.”

A.E. Housman

Foreword. More Poems http://www.kalliope.org/vaerktoc.pl?vid=housman/1936 (1936)

“In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.”

A.E. Housman

According to Frederic Prokosch, in his Voices: A Memoir (1983), this was once said to him by Housman.
Attributed

“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.”

A.E. Housman

No. 9, st. 3. Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

“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

Introduction to Astronomicon of Manilius, Lib I. (Cambridge University Press, [1903] 1937) p. xliii.

“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.”

A.E. Housman

The Name and Nature of Poetry

“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.”

A.E. Housman

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

“There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 31, st. 4.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“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."”

A.E. Housman

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.
"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921