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The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
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
Mortal
Sickness
Mortals
Unhappy
Joy
Happiness
Kind
Mind
More quotes by A. E. Housman
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
A. E. Housman
The fairies break their dances And leave the printed lawn.
A. E. Housman
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
The bells they sound on Bredon, And still the steeples hum. Come all to church, good people- Oh, noisy bells, be dumb I hear you, I will come.
A. E. Housman
Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways.
A. E. Housman
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in troubleHis forest fleece the Wrekin heavesThe wind it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
A. E. Housman
The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me.
A. E. Housman
All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.
A. E. Housman
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
Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.
A. E. Housman
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
And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.
A. E. Housman
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
A. E. Housman
I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
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
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
I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.
A. E. Housman
And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
A. E. Housman
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
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
