Quotes by William Ernest Henley - Page 1

Life - life - let there be life!
William Ernest Henley / Poet
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Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Life Is
Shame
Thinking
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A late lark twitters from the quiet skies.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Larks
Quiet
Sky
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Open your heart and take us in, Love-love and me.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Love
Life
Heart
Open Your Heart
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I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Fear
Atheism
Soul
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Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Night
Sleep
Stars
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So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dead indeed.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Death
Dies
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Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Chance
Statistics
Unconquerable Will
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beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Tears
Unconquerable Will
Wrath
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Men may scoff, and men may pray, But they pay Every pleasure with a pain.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Men
May
Pain
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Here is the ghost Of a summer that lived for us, Ere is a promise Of summer to be.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
July
Promise
Summer
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Who but knows How it goes! Life's a last year's Nightingale, Love's a last year's rose.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Life
Rose
Years
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And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Medical
Friendly
Life And Death
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Life - life - life! 'Tis the sole great thing This side of death, Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Life
Heart
Spring
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This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Art
Distinction
Essence
Merit
Real
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Life is worth Living Through every grain of it, From the foundations To the last edge Of the cornerstone, death.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Life
Foundation
Lasts
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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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Death
Dying
Pieces
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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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Life
Fate
My Soul
Punishment
Soul
Am
Captain
Charged
How
Master
Matters
Gate
Punishments
Scroll
Strait
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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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Life
Ocean
Men
Soul
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In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeoning of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Chance
Bloody
Clutch
Cried
One Tree Hill Love
Unconquerable Will
Aloud
Circumstance
Fell
Head
Nor
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Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Men
Combat
Common
Compelling
Discussion
Faculty
Mind
Quickening
Speculation
Minds
Rembrandt
Shakespeare
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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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Death
Mother
Summer
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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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Life
Curls
Wind
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[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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Hey
Hot
Tables
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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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Anthology
Incapable
Possession
World
All The World
Content
Besides
Ideal
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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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Artist
Criticism
Giving
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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)
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Men
Night
Summer
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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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Death
Heart
Taken
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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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Home
Sea
Tree
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To be a good Briton, a man must trade profitably, marry respectably, live cleanly, avoid excess, revere the established order, and wear his heart in his breeches pocket or anywhere but on his sleeve.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Excess
Trade
Anywhere
Good Heart Man
Avoid
Established
Marry
Pocket
Revere
Sleeve
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Balzac's ambition was to be omnipotent. He would be Michelangelesque, and that by sheer force of minuteness. He exaggerated scientifically, and made things gigantic by a microscopic fulness of detail.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Ambition
Exaggerated
Omnipotent
Sheer
Detail
Gigantic
Microscopic
Scientifically
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Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering, the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true essayist is, in a literary sense, the friend of everybody.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Reading
Remember
World
Worth Reading
Confronted
Essayist
Literary
Poets
Remembering
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Life - life - let there be life! Better a thousand times the roaring hours When wave and wind, Like the Arch-Murderer in flight From the Avenger at his heel, Storm through the desolate fastnesses And wild waste places of the world!
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Life
Storm
Wind
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Life - give me life until the end, That at the very top of being, The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, Out of the reddest hell of the fight I may be snatched and flung Into the everlasting lull, The immortal, incommunicable dream.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Dream
Life
Fighting
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It is the artist's function not to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Actuality
Appropriate
Artist
Confusion
Function
Gross
Idle
Immortal
Irrelevant
Raw Materials
Select
Accidental
Copy
Eliminate
Material
Perpetuation
Raw
Raw Material
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Shakespeare often writes so ill that you hesitate to believe he could ever write supremely well; or, if this way of putting it seem indecorous and abominable, he very often writes so well that you are loth to believe he could ever have written thus extremely ill.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Believe
Ill
Way
Writing
Hesitate
Shakespeare
Supremely
Thus
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The nightingale has a lyre of gold, The lark's is a clarion call, And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, But I love him best of all. For his song is all the joy of life, And we in the mad spring weather, We two have listened till he sang Our hearts and lips together.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Heart
Song
Spring
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The life of Dumas is not only a monument of endeavour and success, it is a sort of labyrinth as well. It abounds in pseudonyms and disguises, in sudden and unexpected appearances and retreats as unexpected and sudden, in scandals and in rumours, in mysteries and traps and ambuscades of every kind.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Endeavour
Labyrinth
Monument
Pseudonyms
Retreat
Rumours
Traps
Unexpected
Abound
Appearances
Mysteries
Retreats
Scandals
Sudden
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Men there have been who have done the essayist's part so well as to have earned an immortality in the doing; but we have had not many of them, and they make but a poor figure on our shelves. It is a pity that things should be thus with us, for a good essayist is the pleasantest companion imaginable.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Men
Companion
Done
Immortality
Pity
Shelves
Earned
Essayist
Imaginable
Thus
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There are two men in Tolstoy. He is a mystic and he is also a realist. He is addicted to the practice of a pietism that for all its sincerity is nothing if not vague and sentimental; and he is the most acute and dispassionate of observers, the most profound and earnest student of character and emotion.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Men
Character
Dispassionate
Earnest
Emotion
Mystic
Observers
Practice
Profound
Realist
Sentimental
Sincerity
Two
Vague
Acute
Student
Tolstoy
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Behold me waiting—waiting for the knife.... The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform, The drunken dark, the little death-in-life.... [F]ace to face with chance, I shrink a little: My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. ...I am ready But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: You carry Cæsar and his fortunes—steady!
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Dark
Strong
Sweet
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Or ever the knightly years were gone, with the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon and you were a Christian Slave. I saw, I took, I cast you by, I bent and broke your pride... And a myriad suns have set and shone, since then upon the grave, Decreed by the King in Babylon, to her that had been his slave. The pride I trampled is now my scathe, for it tramples me again. The old remnant lasts like death for you love, yet you refrain. I break my heart on your hard unfaith, and I break my heart in vain.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Karma
Kings
Christian
Heart
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Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb. Love, which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom. Love, which is lust, is the Main of Desire. Love, which is lust, is the Centric Fire. So man and woman will keep their trust, Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust. Yea, each with the other will lose and win, Till the very Sides of the Grave fall in. For the strife of Love's the abysmal strife, And the word of Love is the Word of Life. And they that go with the Word unsaid, Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Life
Running
Spring
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Out of the night that covers me, Black is the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. 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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Strength
Don't Give Up
Fate
Giving Up
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Between the dusk of a summer night And the dawn of a summer day, We caught at a mood as it passed in flight, And we bade it stoop and stay. And what with the dawn of night began With the dusk of day was done; For that is the way of woman and man, When a hazard has made them one. Arc upon arc, from shade to shine, The World went thundering free; And what was his errand but hers and mine - The lords of him, I and she? 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.
William Ernest Henley / Poet
Men
Night
Summer
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William Ernest Henley Quotes - Page 1

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