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…

— 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,…

— William Ernest Henley

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

— William Ernest Henley

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…

— William Ernest Henley

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

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

— William Ernest Henley

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

— 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

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

— William Ernest Henley

Or ever the knightly years were gone, with the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon and you…

— William Ernest Henley

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

— 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…

— William Ernest Henley

Were I so tall as to reach the pole or grasp the ocean at a span, I must be measured by my…

— William Ernest Henley

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

— 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…

— William Ernest Henley

Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb. Love, which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom. Love, which…

— 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…

— William Ernest Henley

[T]hey stretch you on a table. Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the…

— William Ernest Henley

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

— William Ernest Henley

Life - life - let there be life! Better a thousand times the roaring hours When wave and wind, Like the Arch-Murderer…

— William Ernest Henley

I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

— William Ernest Henley

O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy…

— 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…

— William Ernest Henley

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

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

— William Ernest Henley