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

A. E. Housman

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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
Choose
Word
Wrong
Right

More quotes by A. E. Housman

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When the journey's over/There'll be time enough to sleep.
A. E. Housman
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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
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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.
A. E. Housman
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There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.
A. E. Housman
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June suns, you cannot store them To warm the winter's cold, The lad that hopes for heaven Shall fill his mouth with mould.
A. E. Housman
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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
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His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.
A. E. Housman
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I sought them far and found them, The sure, the straight, the brave, The hearts I lost my own to, The souls I could not save They braced their belts about them, They crossed in ships the sea, They sought and found six feet of ground, And there they died for me.
A. E. Housman
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And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
A. E. Housman
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Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again.
A. E. Housman
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Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill
A. E. Housman
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I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
A. E. Housman
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The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
A. E. Housman
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All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.
A. E. Housman
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Into my hear an air that kills through yon far country blows what are those blue remembered hills what spires,what farms are those? that is the land of lost content I can see it shining plain the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
A. E. Housman
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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
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Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.
A. E. Housman
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The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.
A. E. Housman
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Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.
A. E. Housman
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And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
A. E. Housman