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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
Word
Wrong
Right
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More quotes by A. E. Housman

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Stone, steel, dominions pass, Faith too, no wonder So leave alone the grass That I am under.
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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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
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Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.
A. E. Housman
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The fairies break their dances And leave the printed lawn.
A. E. Housman
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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.
A. E. Housman
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He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, And went with half my life about my ways.
A. E. Housman
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And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
A. E. Housman
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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
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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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'Tis spring come out to ramble The hilly brakes around, For under thorn and bramble About the hollow ground The primroses are found. And there's the windflower chilly With all the winds at play, And there's the Lenten lily That has not long to stay And dies on Easter day.
A. E. Housman
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I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
A. E. Housman
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Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
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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These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. The British regulars who made the retreat from Mons, beginning August 24, 1914.
A. E. Housman
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White in the moon the long road lies.
A. E. Housman
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Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.
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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Housman is one of my heroes and always has been. He was a detestable and miserable man. Arrogant, unspeakably lonely, cruel, and so on, but and absolutely marvellous minor poet, I think, and a great scholar.
A. E. Housman
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When the journey's over/There'll be time enough to sleep.
A. E. Housman