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The difference between an icicle and a red-hot poker is really much slighter than the difference between truth and falsehood or sense and nonsense; yet it is much more immediately noticeable and much more universally noticed, because the body is more sensitive than the mind.

— A. E. Housman The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism (1921)

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More quotes by A. E. Housman

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

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.

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.

Last Poems (1922)

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

His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.

A Shropshire Lad (1896)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: A. E. Housman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.