A.E. Housman: Trending quotes

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A.E. Housman: 138 quotes2 likes

“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

“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

No. 12, l. 1-4. Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

“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)

“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.”

A.E. Housman

No. 37 ("Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries"). Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

“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)

“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.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 62, st. 2.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“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