Quote

Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

A. E. Housman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Lines
Memory
Strays
Morning
Line
Razor
Experience
Watches
Shaving
Keep
Poetry
Razors
Watch
Ceases
Thoughts
Skin
Memories
Cease
Taught
Skins
Bristles

More quotes by A. E. Housman

Image
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
Image
Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.
A. E. Housman
Image
All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.
A. E. Housman
Image
Good religious poetry... is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.
A. E. Housman
Image
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
Image
All knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.
A. E. Housman
Image
A moment's thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.
A. E. Housman
Image
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
Image
Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
A. E. Housman
Image
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.
A. E. Housman
Image
I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.
A. E. Housman
Image
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
Image
We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.
A. E. Housman
Image
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
A. E. Housman
Image
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
Image
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.
A. E. Housman
Image
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
Image
And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
A. E. Housman
Image
Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.
A. E. Housman
Image
Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.
A. E. Housman