A. E. Housman Quotes :
“The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.”
“Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.”
“The thoughts of others were light and fleeting, of lovers’ meeting or luck or fame. Mine were of trouble, and mine were steady, so I was ready when trouble came.”
“The rainy Pleiads wester, Orion plunges prone, and midnight strikes and hastens, and I lie down alone.”
“The land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.”
“Good-night; ensured release, imperishable peace, have these for yours, while sea abides, and land, and earth’s foundations stand, and heaven endures.”
“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now is hung with bloom along the bough, and stands about the woodland ride wearing white for Eastertide.”
“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.”
“The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do; my pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two.”
“To think that two and two are four and neither five nor three the heart of man has long been sore and long ’tis like to be.”
“Here of a Sunday morning my love and I would lie, and see the coloured counties, and hear the larks so high about us in the sky.”
“This is the land of the lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.”
“Into my heart an air that kills from yon far country blows: what are those blue remembered hills, what spires, what farms are those?”
“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.”
“The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild; it has devoured the little child. The little child is unaware it has been eaten by the bear.”
“Therefore, since the world has still much good, but much less good than ill, and while the sun and moon endure luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure, I’d face it as a wise man would, and train for ill and not for good.”
“Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, but young men think it is, and we were young.”
“The loveliest things in life are but shadows; they come and go, and change and fade away, and leave us dreaming.”
“Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.”
“In every cry of every man, in every infant’s cry of fear, in every voice, in every ban, the mind-forged manacles I hear.”
“Here dead we lie 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.”
“And silence sounds no worse than cheers after earth has stopped the ears.”
“The year’s at the spring and day’s at the morn; morning’s at seven; the hillside’s dew-pearled; the lark’s on the wing; the snail’s on the thorn; God’s in His heaven—all’s right with the world.”
“A stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.”
“The infant child is not aware it has been eaten by the bear.”
“The lad that loves you true, he won’t know where to find you.”
“The tear another’s tears bring forth, the sigh which answers sigh, the pulse that beats at other’s woes, e’en though our own be nigh.”
“Yonder see the morning blink: the sun is up, and up must I, to wash and dress and eat and drink and look at things and talk and think and work, and God knows why.”
“The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; the young birds are chirping in the nest.”
“And malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.”
“When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, ‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas but not your heart away.'”
“When the bells justle in the tower the hollow night amid, then on my tongue the taste is sour of all I ever did.”
“Therefore, since the world has still much good, but much less good than ill, and while the sun and moon endure luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.”
“And early though the laurel grows it withers quicker than the rose.”
“I, a stranger and afraid in a world I never made.”
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