Famous A. E. Housman Quotes: A. E. Housman was a renowned English poet and classical scholar, best known for his lyrical and melancholic poetry. His words evoke deep emotion and reflection on life, love, and mortality, inspiring readers to appreciate beauty, embrace fleeting moments, and contemplate the passage of time.
“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
“All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.” – A. E. Housman
“That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.” – A. E. Housman
“And malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.” – A. E. Housman
“Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.” – A. E. Housman
“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.” – A. E. Housman
“The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.” – A. E. Housman
“I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.” – A. E. Housman
“I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.” – A. E. Housman
“Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.” – A. E. Housman
“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.” – A. E. Housman
“The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.” – A. E. Housman
“Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.” – A. E. Housman
“If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.” – A. E. Housman
“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.” – A. E. Housman
“Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.” – A. E. Housman
“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.” – A. E. Housman
“In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.” – A. E. Housman
“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.” – A. E. Housman
“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.” – A. E. Housman