A. E. Housman World Quotations

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.

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.

Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill

I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.

I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.