Companion Quote by 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…

— 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…

— 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 men for…

— 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 chance, I…

— 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 were a…

— 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 of content…

— William Ernest Henley