A. E. Housman

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.

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 average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.

I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.

And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.

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.

Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.

Malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

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.

All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.

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 house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.

Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

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.

If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

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.