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 HenleyAnd lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet.
William Ernest HenleyShakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion.
William Ernest HenleyBehold me waitingโwaiting for the knife.... The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform, The drunken dark, the little death-in-life.... [F]ace to face with chance, I shrink a little: My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. ...I am ready But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: You carry Cรฆsar and his fortunesโsteady!
William Ernest HenleyOr 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