Alfred Edward Housman Quotes

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

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.

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

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.

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.

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.

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away."

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.

Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.

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 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.

Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings All desired and timely things. All whom morning sends to roam, Hesper loves to lead them home. Home return who him behold, Child to mother, sheep to fold, Bird to nest from wandering wide: Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.

He stood, and heard the steeple Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town. One, two, three, four, to market-place and people It tossed them down. Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck.

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

Oh, when I was in love with you Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well did I behave. And now the fancy passes by And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again.