A.E. Housman: Quotes about God

A.E. Housman was English classical scholar and poet. Explore interesting quotes on god.

A.E. Housman: 138 quotes2 likes

“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.”

"Letter to Gilbert Murray" (April 23, 1900).

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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)

“And how am I to face the odds
Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.”

No. 12, l. 15-18. <br class="br"> Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

“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.”

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