"A textual critic engaged upon his business is not at all like Newton investigating the motions of the planets: he is much more like a dog hunting for fleas. If a dog hunted for fleas on mathematical principles, basing his researches on statistics of area and population, he would never catch a flea except by accident."
Alfred Edward Housman was an English classical scholar and poet. He showed early promise as a student at the University of Oxford, but he failed the final examination in literae humaniores and took employment as a patent examiner in London in 1882. In his spare time he engaged in textual criticism of classical Greek and Latin texts and his publications as an independent researcher earned him a hig
"It is supposed that there has been progress in the science of textual criticism, and the most frivolous pretender has learned to talk superciliously about "the old unscientific days". The old unscientific days are everlasting; they are here and now; they are renewed perennially by the ear which takes formulas in, and the tongue which gives them out again, and the mind which meanwhile is empty of reflexion and stuffed with self-complacency."
"And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears."
"They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man, The lads that will die in their glory and never be old."
"Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride."
"When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away."
"Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time."