Top 25 William Ernest Henley Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

— William Ernest Henley

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes, Life Quotes, Goal Quotes, Confidence Quotes, Interesting Quotes

2. “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll; I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

— William Ernest Henley

Featured in: Interesting Quotes, Meaning Quotes, Self-Realization Quotes, Meaningful Quotes, Self-Empowerment Quotes

3. “I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.”

— William Ernest Henley

Featured in: Mental Strength Quotes

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

— William Ernest Henley

Featured in: Mental Strength Quotes, Obstacles Quotes, Stay Strong Quotes, Grit Quotes, Survival Quotes

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

— William Ernest Henley

6. “Life – give me life until the end, That at the very top of being, The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, Out of the reddest hell of the fight I may be snatched and flung Into the everlasting lull, The immortal, incommunicable dream.”

— William Ernest Henley

7. “Life – life – let there be life!”

— William Ernest Henley

8. “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 is the standard of the man.”

— William Ernest Henley

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

— William Ernest Henley

10. “Life is worth Living Through every grain of it, From the foundations To the last edge Of the cornerstone, death.”

— William Ernest Henley

11. “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

12. “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

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

— William Ernest Henley

14. “Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep.”

— William Ernest Henley

15. “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

16. “Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame.”

— William Ernest Henley

17. “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

18. “Open your heart and take us in, Love-love and me.”

— William Ernest Henley

19. “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

20. “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.”

— William Ernest Henley

21. “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.”

— William Ernest Henley

22. “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

23. “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!”

— William Ernest Henley

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

— William Ernest Henley

25. “A late lark twitters from the quiet skies.”

— William Ernest Henley

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

— William Ernest Henley

27. “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

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— William Ernest Henley