63 Quotes by 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.

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.

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.

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.

Life – life – let there be life! Better a thousand times the roaring hours When wave and wind, Like the Arch-Murderer in flight From the Avenger at his heel, Storm through the desolate fastnesses And wild waste places of the world!

Here is the ghost Of a summer that lived for us, Ere is a promise Of summer to be.

Who but knows How it goes! Life’s a last year’s Nightingale, Love’s a last year’s rose.

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.

For it’s home, dearie, home – it’s home I want to be. Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea. O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree They’re all growing green in the old countrie.