William Ernest Henley
13 quotes
Biography
"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."
"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."
"Plainly Hugo was the greatest man of letters of his day. It has been given to few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so rich in honour and success and fame. Born almost with the century, he was a writer at fifteen, and at his death he was writing still; so that the record of his career embraces a period of more than sixty years. There is hardly a department of art to a foremost place in which he did not prove his right. From first to last; from the time of Chateaubriand to the time of Zola, he was a leader of men; and with his departure from the scene the undivided sovereignty of literature became a thing of the past like Alexander's empire."
"Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame."
"Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn."
"In the days of my early acquaintance with Henley, some fourteen or fifteen years ago, I could never look at him without wondering why none of his artist friends had taken him for a model of Pan. They say he was like Johnson, and like Heine; and he had something of both. But to me he was the startling image of Pan come on earth and clothed—the great god Pan, down in the reeds by the river, with halting foot and flaming shaggy hair, and arms and shoulders huge and threatening, like those of some Faun or Satyr of the ancient woods, and the brow and eyes of the Olympians. Wellnigh captive to his chair, with the crutch never far from his elbow, dragging himself when he moved, with slow effort, he yet seemed instinct with the life of the germinating elemental earth, when gods and men were vital with the force that throbbed in beast and flower and wandering breeze. The large heart, and the large frame, the broad tolerant smile, the inexhaustible interest in nature and mankind, the brave, unquenchable cheerfulness under afflictions and adversities, the frank appreciation and apology for the animal side of things, all helped to maintain the impression of a kind of Pagan strength and simplicity."
"Of Henley the talker, at least, one portrait remains. He was the original of Stevenson's Burly the talker who would roar you down, bury his face in his hands, undergo passions of revolt and agony, letting loose a spring torrent of words. There was always a wild flood and storm of talk wherever Henley might be."
"Henley's talk was animated above all by the intense and virile love of life that I was so conscious of in him personally, that reveals itself in every line he wrote, and that is what I liked best about him. He was so alive, so exhilarated with the sense of being alive. The tremendous vitality of the man, that should have found its legitimate outlet in physical activity, seemed to have gone instead into his thought and his expression of it as if the very fact that fate forced him to remain a looker-on had made him the more sensitive to the beauty, the joy, the challenge in everything life gave him to look at. He could wrest romance even out of the drear, drab hospital."
"It has been said of him that his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold; and the same, I think, has been said of other powerful constitutions condemned to much physical inaction. There is something boisterous and piratic in Burly's manner of talk which suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his attitude of mind is both conciliatory and receptive."
"He founded a school, and has survived all his disciples. He has always thought too much about himself, which is wise; and written too much about others, which is foolish. His prose is the beautiful prose of a poet, and his poetry the beautiful poetry of a prose-writer. His personality is insistent. To converse with him is a physical no less than an intellectual recreation. He is never forgotten by his enemies, and often forgiven by his friends. He has added several new words to the language, and his style is an open secret. He has fought a good fight, and has had to face every difficulty except popularity."
"He was most human—human, I used to say, like one of Shakespeare's characters—and yet pressed and pummelled, as it were, into a single attitude, almost into a gesture and a speech, as by some overwhelming situation. I disagreed with him about everything, but I admired him beyond words."
"I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul."
"Bland as a Jesuit sober as a hymn."