Laurence Housman (/ˈhaʊsmən/; 18 July 1865 – 20 February 1959) was an English playwright, writer and illustrator.
I have always been a writer of letters, and of long ones; so, when I first thought of writing a book in the form of letters, I knew that I could do it quickly and easily.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
For the last half of my life I have had the doubtful benefit of a brother whose literary reputation is much greater than my own.
The modern form of things had begun to appeal to me, also (as material for satire) politics, and the lives of the great and little, high up in the social scale.
I still think that if the human race, or even one nation, could only get right about its God the rest would follow.
A saint is one who makes goodness attractive.
I had never thought of myself as a dramatist, and, for really good technical results, the thought came too late: a man of letters has become too wordy to write economically for the stage.
If I live for another ten years I shall probably have written all that I want to write.
It is right and natural that generous minds while in the twenties should think the books which try to reform the world's wrong the greatest of all.
If fathers were to be mothers, then there will never have a family of more than three.
I shall not die young, for I am already near seventy: I may die old.
Father eternal, ruler of creation, Spirit of life, which moved ere form was made Through the thick darkness covering every nation Light to man's blindness, O be Thou our aid.
I was just then going through a healthy reaction from the orthodoxy of my youth; religion had become for me not so much a possession as an obsession, which I was trying to throw off, and this iconoclastic tale of an imaginary tribe was the result.
I believe absolutely in love being the central motive force of the universe.
But it has also enabled me to find my feet as a lecturer and a reader of my own plays to audiences who like to hear them; and that experience of immediate appreciation gives greater pleasure and more stimulus towards further activity than even the most laudatory of reviews.
My failure, during the first five or six years of my art training, to get set in the right direction, and the disappointment which it caused me, drove me the more persistently into writing as an alternative.
If nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternatively, there would never be more than three in a family.
A saint is one who makes goodness attractive. Surely, a great teacher does the same thing for education.