| Moore's Metaphysics Moore's Metaphysics Moore's Metaphysics | ||||
LETTERS OF GARY.C.MOORE  Back to Letter Contents | ||||
| BON MOTS FROM A. E. HOUSMAN'S PROSE | ||||
"I am told that Americans are human beings, although appearances are against them." "The poor man managed to outlive the respect and appreciation of everybody but himself." ACTUALLY fro A. E.'s brother Laurence, about their father. "I doubt that man has much to gain by substituting peace for strife . . ." A. E. again A. E. received his poetic inspiration for A SHROPSIRE LAD from "a relaxed sore throat". "Existence in itself is not a good thing . . . [It] is no more than an elaborate furnishing and decoration of apartments for the reception of a guest who is never to come." "It is and it must in the long run be better for a man to see things as they are than to be ignorent of them; just as there is less fear of stumbling or striking against corners in the daylight than in the dark." "The time lost, the tissues wasted, in doing anew the brainwork done before by others . . . are in our brief irreparable life disheartening to think of." About Housman: "[He] would not tolerate the idea that it was possible to love more than one woman in his life; anyone who considered that he had done so had simply never really loved at all." "What he says is not false: the falsehood lies in what he does not say." "To read 3000 tall columns of close print by a third rate scholar is no proper occupation by mortals . . . " "In particular he will often propound interpretations which have no bearing either on his own text of Manilius or on any other, but pertain to things he has read elsewhere, and which hang like mists in his memory and veil from his eyes the verses which he thinks he is explaining." | ||||
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