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.

— 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.

— A. E. Housman

Terence, this is stupid stuff:

— A. E. Housman

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

— A. E. Housman

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

— A. E. Housman

Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

— A. E. Housman

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.

— A. E. Housman

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.

— A. E. Housman

Nature, not content with denying to Mr — the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing.

— 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.

— 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.

— 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.

— A. E. Housman

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

— A. E. Housman

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

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.

— A. E. Housman

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

Loveliest of trees, the cherry nowIs hung with bloom along the bough.

— A. E. Housman

Now, of my threescore years and ten,To see the cherry hung with snow.

— A. E. Housman

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;There'll be time enough to sleep.

— A. E. Housman

Lovers lying two and twoNever turns him to the bride.

— A. E. Housman

When I was one-and-twentyBut not your heart away."

— A. E. Housman

When I was one-and-twentyAnd oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

— A. E. Housman

His folly has not fellowHis heart and soul away.

— A. E. Housman

Oh, when I was in love with youAm quite myself again.

— A. E. Housman

To-day, the road all runners come,Townsman of a stiller town.

— A. E. Housman

And silence sounds no worse than cheersAfter earth has stopped the ears.

— A. E. Housman

The bells they sound on BredonI hear you, I will come.

— A. E. Housman

They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.

— A. E. Housman

But from my grave across my browBeneath the suffocating night.

— A. E. Housman

There, like the wind through woods in riot,Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

— A. E. Housman

From far, from eve and morningBlew hither; here am I.

— A. E. Housman

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,That will not shower on me.

— A. E. Housman

Into my heart an air that killsAnd cannot come again.

— 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.

— A. E. Housman

Far in a western brooklandBy pools I used to know.

— A. E. Housman

There, by the starlit fences,About the glimmering weirs.

— A. E. Housman

With rue my heart is ladenIn fields where roses fade.

— A. E. Housman

Now hollow fires burn out to black,There's nothing but the night.

— A. E. Housman

Oh many a peer of England brewsFor fellows whom it hurts to think.

— A. E. Housman

Therefore, since the world has stillAnd train for ill and not for good.

— A. E. Housman

The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowersPass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May.

— A. E. Housman

We for a certainty are not the firstWhatever brute and blackguard made the world.

— A. E. Housman

The troubles of our proud and angry dustShoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

— A. E. Housman

Could man be drunk for everTheir hands upon their hearts.

— A. E. Housman

The laws of God, the laws of man,Laws for themselves and not for me.

— A. E. Housman

And how am I to face the oddsIn a world I never made.

— A. E. Housman

He stood, and heard the steepleIts strength, and struck.

— A. E. Housman

These, in the day when heaven was falling,And saved the sum of things for pay.

— A. E. Housman

Tell me not here, it needs not saying,And I knew all her ways.

— 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...The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach. Houseman's test for great poetry.

— A. E. Housman

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.

— 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.

— A. E. Housman

They say my verse is sad: no wonder.And I am not.

— A. E. Housman

Hope lies to mortalsWas never mine.

— A. E. Housman

The rainy Pleiads wester,And I lie down alone.

— A. E. Housman

All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.

— A. E. Housman

Who made the world I cannot tell; I never soiled with such a deed.

— A. E. Housman

Here dead we lie because we did not chooseBut young men think it is, and we were young.

— A. E. Housman

We now to peace and darknessAnd wilt cast forth no more.

— A. E. Housman

Good-night; ensured release,And heaven endures.

— A. E. Housman