William Morris Quotes

Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures.

[Nature] ever bearing witness against man that he has deliberately chosen ugliness instead of beauty ...

We are only the trustees for those who come after us.

O thrush, your song is passing sweet, But never a song that you have sung Is half so sweet as thrushes sang When my dear love and I were young.

Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.

The books I would like to print are the books I love to read and keep.

By God! I will not tell you more to-day, Judge any way you will - what matters it?

I do not want art for a few; any more than education for a few; or freedom for a few ...

Love is enough: though the world be a-waning, And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining.

Love makes clear the eyes that else would never see: "Love makes blind the eyes to all but me and thee.

Nothing useless can be truly beautiful.

Now let us go, love, down the winding stair,
With fingers intertwined ...

A pattern is either right or wrong ... it is no stronger than its weakest point.

The greatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere.

If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it.

The lost and found the Cause hath crowned, The Day of Days is here.

For hope is dead, for hope is dead.

Art made by the people for the people, as a joy to the maker and the user,

What is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent?

Give me love and work - these two only.

The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?

Not on one strand are all life's jewels strung.

Talk of inspiration is sheer nonsense; there is to such thing. It is mere a matter of craftsmanship.

I can see myself still myself all along the way I have gone. - Lady Abundance

I half wish that I had not been born with a sense of romance and beauty in this accursed age.

The wind is not helpless for any man's need, Nor falleth the rain but for thistle and weed.

No man is good enough to be another's master.

Count on, rest not, for hope is dead.

Ornamental pattern work, to be raised above the contempt of reasonable men, must possess three qualities: beauty, imagination and order.

All rooms ought to look as if they were lived in, and to have so to say, a friendly welcome ready for the incomer.

No pattern should be without some sort of meaning.

The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.

Don't think too much of style.

If we feel the least degradation in being amorous, or merry or hungry, or sleepy, we are so far bad animals & miserable men.

When Socialism comes, it may be in such a form that we won't like it.

My work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another.

The heart desires, the hand refrains. The Godhead fires, the soul attains.

If a chap can't compose an epic poem while he's weaving tapestry, he had better shut up, he'll never do any good at all.

Earth, left silent by the wind of night,Seems shrunken 'neath the gray unmeasured height.

If i were asked to say what is at once the most important production of Art and the thing most to be longed for, I should answer, A beautiful House.

From out the throng and stress of lies, from out the painful noise of sighs, one voice of comfort seems to rise: It is the meaner part that dies.

As to the garden, it seems to me its chief fruit is-blackbirds.

History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.

It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.

To happy folkAll heaviest words no more of meaning bearThan far-off bells saddening the Summer air.

Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.

Let tomorrow cross its own rivers.

The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.

There is no excuse for doing anything which is not strikingly beautiful.

Late February days; and now, at last,
Might you have thought that
Winter's woe was past;
So fair the sky was and so soft the air.

Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant; Life we have loved, through green leaf and through sere, Though still the less we knew of its intent.

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful- 1834

It is for him that is lonely or in prison to dream of fellowship, but for him that is of a fellowship to do and not to dream.

Speak but one word to me.

A world made to be lost, -A bitter life 'twixt pain and nothing tost.