A.E. Housman Quotes

And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

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.

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.

They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up.

Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again.

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

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;The wind it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

The last hour from midnight had lost half its quarters, and the stars went lifting up the great minutes.

The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.

Oh I have been to Ludlow fair, and left my necktie God knows where. And carried half way home, or near, pints and quarts of Ludlow beer.

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

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

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.

With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.

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

Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.

I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.

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 moment's thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.

Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

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.

Give me a land of boughs in leaf A land of trees that stand; Where trees are fallen there is grief; I love no leafless land.

Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.

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.

The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.

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.

I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.

Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.

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

Ten thousand times I've done my best and all's to do again.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's aware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over then there'll be time enough to sleep.

Good religious poetry... is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

To justify God's ways to man.

The modern form of things had begun to appeal to me, also (as material for satire) politics, and the lives of the great and little, high up in the social scale.

If nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternatively, there would never be more than three in a family.

The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking Spins the heavy world around.

A saint is one who makes goodness attractive. Surely, a great teacher does the same thing for education.

The fairies break their dances And leave the printed lawn.

For the last half of my life I have had the doubtful benefit of a brother whose literary reputation is much greater than my own.

Here dead lie we 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.

When the journey's over/There'll be time enough to sleep.

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

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

White in the moon the long road lies.

The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me.

The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.