Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by A. E. Housman (English Scholar, Poet)

A. E. Housman (1859–1936,) fully Alfred Edward Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar. He is now chiefly remembered for the poems collected in A Shropshire Lad (1896,) a series of nostalgic verses primarily based on ballad forms. He was the elder brother of playwright Laurence Housman.

Born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, Housman was educated at Bromsgrove School and St John’s College-Oxford. He failed his degree but became one of the foremost classicists of his age. He was appointed professor of Latin at University College London (1892) and Cambridge (1911.)

Housman published critical editions of the Roman poet Marcus Manilius (1903–30,) Juvenal (1905,) and Lucan (1926.) However, he is known primarily for his poetry, notably A Shropshire Lad (1896,) Last Poems (1922,) and More Poems (1936.) Housman’s lyrics express a Romantic pessimism in a spare, simple style.

Laurence Housman selected the verses for the posthumous volume More Poems (1936.) Housman’s Letters appeared in 1971.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by A. E. Housman

We for a certainty are not the first have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed whatever brute and blackguard made the world.
A. E. Housman
Topics: Idealism, Ideals

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
Topics: Perseverance, Persistence, Adversity

I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.
A. E. Housman
Topics: Fear, Anxiety

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.
A. E. Housman
Topics: Authors & Writing

The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
A. E. Housman
Topics: Service, Giving, Kindness

About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
A. E. Housman
Topics: Snow

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.
A. E. Housman

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
Topics: Remembrance

Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.
A. E. Housman
Topics: Alcoholism, Alcohol

Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover Breath’s a ware that will not keep. Up lad: when the journey’s over There’ll be time enough to sleep.
A. E. Housman
Topics: Morning

Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
A. E. Housman
Topics: Alcohol, Alcoholism

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.
A. E. Housman
Topics: War

Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, 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
Topics: Reading

And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After death has stopped the ears.
A. E. Housman
Topics: Silence

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
A. E. Housman
Topics: America

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