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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
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W. E. Henley
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More quotes by William Ernest Henley
I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
William Ernest Henley
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
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
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
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
beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade
William Ernest Henley
And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet.
William Ernest Henley
So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dead indeed.
William Ernest Henley
Life - life - life! 'Tis the sole great thing This side of death, Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!
William Ernest Henley
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
A late lark twitters from the quiet skies.
William Ernest Henley
Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
William Ernest Henley
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
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
Here is the ghost Of a summer that lived for us, Ere is a promise Of summer to be.
William Ernest Henley
Who but knows How it goes! Life's a last year's Nightingale, Love's a last year's rose.
William Ernest Henley
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
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
Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep.
William Ernest Henley
Open your heart and take us in, Love-love and me.
William Ernest Henley