Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
A. E. Housman
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
A. E. Housman
Age: 77 †
Born: 1859
Born: January 1
Died: 1936
Died: January 1
Classical Philologist
Classical Scholar
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Worcs
A. E. Housman
Poetry
Saying
Thing
Way
More quotes by A. E. Housman
Existence is not itself a good thing, that we should spend a lifetime securing its necessaries: a life spent, however victoriously, in securing the necessaries of life is no more than an elaborate furnishing and decoration of apartments for the reception of a guest who is never to come. Our business here is not to live, but to live happily.
A. E. Housman
All knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.
A. E. Housman
If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude.
A. E. Housman
They say my verse is sad: no wonder Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow, Not mine. but man's.
A. E. Housman
You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over You hearken to the lover's say, And happy is the lover. 'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never: I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.
A. E. Housman
But if you ever come to a road where danger Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share. Be good to the lad who loves you true, And the soul that was born to die for you And whistle and I'll be there.
A. E. Housman
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
A. E. Housman
Good night ensured release, Imperishable peace, Have these for yours. * While sky and sea and land And earth's foundations stand And heaven endures. *These three lines are on the tablet over Housman's grave in the parish church at Ludlow, Shropshire, England
A. E. Housman
Could man be drunk for ever With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at morning And lief lie down of nights. But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts.
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
A moment's thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.
A. E. Housman
This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they're in trouble And I am not.
A. E. Housman
Look not in my eyes, for fear They mirror true the sight I see, And there you find your face too clear And love it and be lost like me.
A. E. Housman
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.
A. E. Housman
Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, I'd face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good.
A. E. Housman
I think that to transfuse emotion - not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer - is the peculiar function of poetry.
A. E. Housman
In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
A. E. Housman
I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
A. E. Housman
White in the moon the long road lies.
A. E. Housman
I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist) and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.
A. E. Housman
