List of William Ernest Henley Quotes

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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

In The Fell Clutch Of Circumstance, I Have Not Winced Nor Cried Aloud: Under The Bludgeoning Of Chance My Head Is Bloody, But Unbowed.

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.

Shakespeare And Rembrandt Have In Common The Faculty Of Quickening Speculation And Compelling The Minds Of Men To Combat And Discussion.

A Late Lark Twitters From The Quiet Skies.

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.

Life - Life - Life! 'tis The Sole Great Thing This Side Of Death, Heart On Heart In The Wonder Of Spring!

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!

And Lo, The Hospital, Gray, Quiet, Old, Where Life And Death Like Friendly Chafferers Meet.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.