All William Ernest Henley Quotes
- 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. Accurate
- Men may scoff, and men may pray, But they pay Every pleasure with a pain. Every Pleasure
- 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. Bloom
- 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… Accomplished
- Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Bloody
- 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… Grasp
- Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep. Gift
- A late lark twitters from the quiet skies. From
- 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. All
- And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet. Death
- 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… Ace
- [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… Bid
- Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion. Combat
- This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence. Art
- 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… Born
- 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… Accidental
- 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… Been
- 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… All
- 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… Abominable
- 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… Abound