William Ernest Henley Quotes

beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll; I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

Men may scoff, and men may pray, But they pay Every pleasure with a pain.

Life is worth Living Through every grain of it, From the foundations To the last edge Of the cornerstone, death.

So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dead indeed.

Here is the ghost Of a summer that lived for us, Ere is a promise Of summer to be.

Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Open your heart and take us in, Love-love and me.

Were I so tall as to reach the pole or grasp the ocean at a span, I must be measured by my soul. The mind is the standard of the man.

Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep.

O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy of woman and man And the longing that makes them one." (Between the Dusk of a Summer Night, 13-16)

Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame.

For it's home, dearie, home--it's home I want to be. Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea. O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree They're all growing green in the old countrie.

Who but knows How it goes! Life's a last year's Nightingale, Love's a last year's rose.

Life is a smoke that curls- Curls in a flickering skein, That winds and whisks and whirls, A figment thin and vain, Into the vast inane. One end for hut and hall.

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeoning of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.

I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

Pointed criticism, if accurate, often gives the artist an inner sense of relief. The criticism that damages is that which disparages, dismisses, ridicules, or condemns.

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.

[T]hey stretch you on a table. Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the anæsthetic reaches Hot and subtle through your being.

Madam Life's a piece in bloom Death goes dogging everywhere: she's the tenant of the room, he's the ruffian on the stair.

So be my passing! My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered in the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.

And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet.

Now, to read poetry at all is to have an ideal anthology of one's own, and in that possession to be incapable of content with the anthologies of all the world besides.

Life - life - life! 'Tis the sole great thing This side of death, Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies.

Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion.

Life - life - let there be life!

Into the winter's gray delight, Into the summer's golden dream, Holy and high and impartial, Death, the mother of Life, Mingles all men for ever.

Bland as a Jesuit sober as a hymn.

I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.

O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy of woman and man And the longing that makes them one.