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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

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William Ernest Henley
Age: 53 †
Born: 1849
Born: August 23
Died: 1903
Died: July 11
Editor
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
W. E. Henley
Reach
Pole
Soul
Span
Must
Measured
Mind
Grasp
Men
Tall
Life
Standard
Standards
Ocean

More quotes by William Ernest Henley

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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
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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.
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Men may scoff, and men may pray, But they pay Every pleasure with a pain.
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Life - life - life! 'Tis the sole great thing This side of death, Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!
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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
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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
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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
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And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet.
William Ernest Henley
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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
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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.
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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!
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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
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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
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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
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I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
William Ernest Henley
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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
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Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
William Ernest Henley
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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
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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
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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