William Ernest Henley Quotes - Page 2

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• 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

  Song, Spring, Heart

  William Ernest Henley (2016). “A Book of Verses”, Read Books Ltd

  14 Copy quote

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

  William Ernest Henley

  Life And Death, Friendly, Medical

  William Ernest Henley (2016). “A Book of Verses”, p.1, Read Books Ltd

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, Wind, Curls

  William Ernest Henley, Robert Louis Stevenson (1908). “The Works of W. E. Henley: Poems”

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Ernest Henley

  Character, Men, Two

  William Ernest Henley (1906). “Views and Reviews: Essays in Appreciation: Literature”

  52 Copy quote

• Or ever the knightly years were gone, with the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon and you were a Christian Slave. I saw, I took, I cast you by, I bent and broke your pride... And a myriad suns have set and shone, since then upon the grave, Decreed by the King in Babylon, to her that had been his slave. The pride I trampled is now my scathe, for it tramples me again. The old remnant lasts like death for you love, yet you refrain. I break my heart on your hard unfaith, and I break my heart in vain.

  William Ernest Henley

  Karma, Christian, Kings

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Believe, Writing, Way

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “Views and reviews”

  11 Copy quote

• 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 not many of them, and they make but a poor figure on our shelves. It is a pity that things should be thus with us, for a good essayist is the pleasantest companion imaginable.

  William Ernest Henley

  Men, Done, Pity

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “Views and reviews”

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  World, Anthology, Possession

  William Ernest Henley (1891). “Lyra Heroica: A Book of Verse for Boys”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Artist, Confusion, Raw Materials

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “The Works of William Ernest Henley: Views and reviews”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Reading, World, Remember

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “The Works of William Ernest Henley: Views and reviews”

  4 Copy quote

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

  William Ernest Henley

  Men, Mind, Common

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “The Works of William Ernest Henley: Views and reviews”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Labyrinth, Retreat, Pseudonyms

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “Views and reviews”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Unconquerable Will, Chance, One Tree Hill Love

  'Invictus. In Memoriam R.T.H.B.' (1888)

  9 Copy quote

• Between the dusk of a summer night
  And the dawn of a summer day,
  We caught at a mood as it passed in flight,
  And we bade it stoop and stay.
  And what with the dawn of night began
  With the dusk of day was done;
  For that is the way of woman and man,
  When a hazard has made them one.
  Arc upon arc, from shade to shine,
  The World went thundering free;
  And what was his errand but hers and mine -
  The lords of him, I and she?
  O, it's die we must, but it's live we can,
  And the marvel of earth and sun
  Is all for the joy of woman and man
  And the longing that makes them one.

  William Ernest Henley

  Summer, Night, Men

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “Poems”

  16 Copy quote

• [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

  Hot, Hey, Tables

  William Ernest Henley, “Operation”

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Death, Dying, Pieces

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “Poems”

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Ernest Henley

  Death, Summer, Mother

  William Ernest Henley, Robert Louis Stevenson (1908). “The Works of W. E. Henley: Poems”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Death, Taken, Heart

  'Margaritae Sororis' (1888)

  6 Copy quote

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