Top 60 A.E. Housman Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— A.E. Housman

2. “Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.”

— A.E. Housman

3. “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

4. “I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.”

— A.E. Housman

5. “With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.”

— A.E. Housman

6. “Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack And leave your friends and go.”

— A.E. Housman

7. “The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.”

— A.E. Housman

8. “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

9. “Oh I have been to Ludlow fair, and left my necktie God knows where. And carried half way home, or near, pints and quarts of Ludlow beer.”

— A.E. Housman

10. “Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings All desired and timely things. All whom morning sends to roam, Hesper loves to lead them home. Home return who him behold, Child to mother, sheep to fold, Bird to nest from wandering wide: Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.”

— A.E. Housman

11. “Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.”

— A.E. Housman

12. “A moment’s thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.”

— A.E. Housman

13. “Ten thousand times I’ve done my best and all’s to do again.”

— A.E. Housman

14. “Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.”

— A.E. Housman

15. “Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.”

— A.E. Housman

16. “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

17. “The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.”

— A.E. Housman

18. “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

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

— A.E. Housman

20. “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.”

— A.E. Housman

21. “Could man be drunk for ever With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at morning And lief lie down of nights. But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts.”

— A.E. Housman

22. “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

23. “Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.”

— A.E. Housman

24. “And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.”

— A.E. Housman

25. “Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.”

— A.E. Housman

26. “I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.”

— A.E. Housman

27. “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

28. “June suns, you cannot store them To warm the winter’s cold, The lad that hopes for heaven Shall fill his mouth with mould.”

— A.E. Housman

29. “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

30. “They say my verse is sad: no wonder; Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow, Not mine. but man’s.”

— A.E. Housman

31. “Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man’s deceiver Was never mine.”

— A.E. Housman

32. “Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.”

— A.E. Housman

33. “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

34. “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.”

— A.E. Housman

35. “The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.”

— A.E. Housman

36. “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

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

— A.E. Housman

38. “Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.”

— A.E. Housman

39. “To justify God’s ways to man.”

— A.E. Housman

40. “All knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.”

— A.E. Housman

41. “Stone, steel, dominions pass, Faith too, no wonder; So leave alone the grass That I am under.”

— A.E. Housman

42. “I sought them far and found them, The sure, the straight, the brave, The hearts I lost my own to, The souls I could not save They braced their belts about them, They crossed in ships the sea, They sought and found six feet of ground, And there they died for me.”

— A.E. Housman

43. “This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they’re in trouble And I am not.”

— A.E. Housman

44. “There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.”

— A.E. Housman

45. “We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.”

— A.E. Housman

46. “I think that to transfuse emotion – not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader’s sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer – is the peculiar function of poetry.”

— A.E. Housman

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

— A.E. Housman

48. “Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.”

— A.E. Housman

Featured in: Strong Quotes

49. “White in the moon the long road lies.”

— A.E. Housman

50. “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.”

— A.E. Housman