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.
About A. E. Housman
Alfred Edward Housmanwas an English classical scholar and poet. After an initially poor performance while at university, he took employment as a clerk in London and established his academic reputation by first publishing as a private scholar.
More quotes from A. E. Housman
The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
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.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
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.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
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.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
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.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
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.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
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.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)
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.
British classical scholar and poet (1859-1936)