A. E. Housman
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.Collection: Experience
If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.Collection: Poetry
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.Collection: God
Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.Collection: Poetry
All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.Collection: Knowledge
I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.Collection: Poetry
The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
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.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.
Malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.
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.
In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
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.
The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.
I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.Collection: Way
But if you ever come to a road where danger; Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share. Be good to the lad who loves you true, And the soul that was born to die for you; And whistle and I'll be there.Collection: Love
Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.Collection: Book
I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.Collection: Right Words
Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.Collection: Heart
I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.Collection: World
Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.Collection: Funny
A moment's thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.Collection: Long
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.Collection: Science
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.Collection: Life
When the journey's over/There'll be time enough to sleep.Collection: Sleep
The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.Collection: Happiness
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure.Collection: Luck
With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.Collection: Heart
Give me a land of boughs in leaf A land of trees that stand; Where trees are fallen there is grief; I love no leafless land.Collection: Grief
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.Collection: Country
Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: Strength
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.Collection: Hair
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;The wind it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.Collection: Wind
Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time. Moping, melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.Collection: Stupid
On occasions, after drinking a pint of beer at luncheon, there would be a flow into my mind with sudden and unaccountable emotion, sometimes a line or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza, accompanied, not preceded by a vague notion of the poem which they were destined to form a part of.... I say bubble up because, so far as I could make out, the source of the suggestions thus proffered to the brain was the pit of the stomach.Collection: Drinking
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Book
The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.Collection: Lying