"Again as with a bullfight, you never appreciate this sport till you see a really great performer. Something departed for ever from the pleasure of specialist review reading when A. E. Housman gibbeted his last victim."

"Housman is a "country" poet. His poems are full of the charm of buried villages, the nostalgia of place-names, Clunton and Clunbury, Knighton, Ludlow, "on Wenlock Edge", "in summer time on Bredon", thatched roofs and the jingle of smithies, the wild jonquils in the pastures, the "blue, remembered hills"."

"At the beginning of the period I am speaking of, the years during and immediately after the war, the writer who had the deepest hold upon the thinking young was almost certainly Housman. Among people who were adolescent in the years 1910–25, Housman had an influence which was enormous and is now not at all easy to understand. In 1920, when I was about seventeen, I probably knew the whole of the Shropshire Lad by heart... these are the poems that I and my contemporaries used to recite to ourselves, over and over, in a kind of ecstasy."

"He published about 235 articles and edited Lucan, Juvenal, and five volumes of Manilius between 1903 and 1930. Widely acknowledged as the greatest scholar of his age, he could justly claim with Horace: Exegi monumentum aere perennius (I have built a monument more lasting than bronze)."

"When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, "The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue." And I am two-and-twenty And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true."

"When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away.""

"Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride."

"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."

"Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow."

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough."

"Nature, not content with denying to Mr — the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing."

"Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists? 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."

"My heart always warms to people who do not come to see me, especially Americans, to whom it seems to be more of an effort."

"I rather doubt if man really has much to gain by substituting peace for strife, as you and Jesus Christ recommend. Sic notus Ulixes? do you think you can outwit the resourceful malevolence of Nature? God is not mocked, as St. Paul long ago warned the Galatians. When man gets rid of a great trouble he is easier for a while, but not for long: Nature instantly sets to work to weaken his power of sustaining trouble, and very soon seven pounds is as heavy as fourteen pounds used to be. Last Easter Monday a young woman threw herself in the Lea because her dress looked so shabby amongst the holiday crowd: in other times and countries women have been ravished by half-a-dozen dragoons and taken it less to heart. It looks to me as if the state of mankind always had been and always would be a state of just tolerable discomfort."

"Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time."

"The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic. His opinions are determined not by his reason -- 'the bulk of mankind' says Swift 'is as well qualified for flying as for thinking' -- but by his passions; and the faintest of all human passions is the love of truth. He believes that the text of ancient authors is generally sound, not because he has acquainted himself with the elements of the problem, but because he would feel uncomfortable if he did not believe it; just as he believes, on the same cogent evidence, that he is a fine fellow, and that he will rise again from the dead."

"The house of delusions is cheap to build, but draughty to live in, and ready at any instant to fall."

"Chorus: O suitably attired in leather boots Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom Whence by what way how purposed art thou come To this well-nightingaled vicinity? My object in inquiring is to know. But if you happen to be deaf and dumb And do not understand a word I say, Nod with your hand to signify as much. Alcmaeon: I journeyed hither a Boeotian road. Chorus: Sailing on horseback or with feet for oars? Alcmaeon: Plying by turns my partnership of legs. Chorus: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus? Alcmaeon: Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes. Chorus: To learn your name would not displease me much. Alcmaeon: Not all that men desire do they attain."

"The most important truth which has ever been uttered, and the greatest discovery ever made in the moral world."

"When the Law shows her teeth, but dares not bite."

"And friend received with thumps upon the back."

"There buds the promise of celestial worth."

"Time elaborately thrown away."

"Accept a miracle instead of wit,— See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ."

"He weeps! the falling drop puts out the sun; He sighs! the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes. If in His love so terrible, what then His wrath inflamed?"

"Too low they build who build beneath the stars."

"As Love alone can exquisitely bless, Love only feels the marvellous of pain; Opens new veins of torture in the soul, And wakes the nerve where agonies are born."

"In records that defy the tooth of time."

"Their feet through faithless leather met the dirt, And oftener chang'd their principles than shirt."

"The man that makes a character makes foes."

"In youth, what disappointments of our own making: in age, what disappointments from the nature of things."

"The blood will follow where the knife is driven, The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear."

"Souls made of fire, and children of the sun, With whom revenge is virtue."

"Life is the desert, life the solitude; Death joins us to the great majority."

"Ah! what is human life? How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade, Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd! The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth; Too subtle is the movement to be seen; Yet soon the hour is up—and we are gone."

"Great let me call him, for he conquered me."

"Tomorrow is a satire on today, And shows its weakness."

"They only babble who practise not reflection."

"The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done."

"By all means use some time to be alone."

"For Rules, like Crutches, are a needful Aid to the Lame, tho' an impediment to the Strong."

"There is something in Poetry beyond Prose-reason; there are Mysteries in it not to be explained, but admired; which render mere Prose-men Infidels to their Divinity."

"Born Originals - how comes it to pass that we die Copies?"

"The course of Nature is the art of God."

"An undevout astronomer is mad."

"'T is elder Scripture, writ by God's own hand,— Scripture authentic! uncorrupt by man."

"Final Ruin fiercely drives Her plowshare o'er creation."

"To frown at pleasure, and to smile in pain."

"A man of pleasure is a man of pains."

"The house of laughter makes a house of woe."