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I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.

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
Stranger
Afraid
Made
Never
World

More quotes by 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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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.
A. E. Housman
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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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Mithridates, he died old. Housman's passage is based on the belief of the ancients that Mithridates the Great [c. 135-63 B.C.] had so saturated his body with poisons that none could injure him. When captured by the Romans he tried in vain to poison himself, then ordered a Gallic mercenary to kill him.
A. E. Housman
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Ten thousand times I've done my best and all's to do again.
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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They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up.
A. E. Housman
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Wanderers eastward, wanderers west, Know you why you cannot rest? 'Tis that every mother's son Travails with a skeleton. Lie down in the bed of dust Bear the fruit that bear you must Bring the eternal seed to light, And morn is all the same as night.
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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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.
A. E. Housman
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The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
A. E. Housman
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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
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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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Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again.
A. E. Housman
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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
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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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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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Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.
A. E. Housman
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Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine.
A. E. Housman
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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