Top 79 William Morris Quotes
#1. Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures.
William Morris
#3. Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful- 1834
William Morris
#4. The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.
William Morris
#5. The books I would like to print are the books I love to read and keep.
William Morris
#6. The greatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere.
William Morris
#7. 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.
William Morris
#11. I half wish that I had not been born with a sense of romance and beauty in this accursed age.
William Morris
#12. I do not want art for a few; any more than education for a few; or freedom for a few ...
William Morris
#13. 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.
William Morris
#14. 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.
William Morris
#15. A pattern is either right or wrong ... it is no stronger than its weakest point.
William Morris
#16. [Nature] ever bearing witness against man that he has deliberately chosen ugliness instead of beauty ...
William Morris
#17. I can see myself still myself all along the way I have gone. - Lady Abundance
William Morris
#18. All rooms ought to look as if they were lived in, and to have so to say, a friendly welcome ready for the incomer.
William Morris
#19. Earth, left silent by the wind of night,Seems shrunken 'neath the gray unmeasured height.
William Morris
#20. Beauty, which is what is meant by art, using the word in its widest sense, is, I contend, no mere accident to human life, which people can take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity of life.
William Morris
#21. History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.
William Morris
#22. The heart desires, the hand refrains. The Godhead fires, the soul attains.
William Morris
#23. Everything made by man's hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent ...
William Morris
#24. I am going your way, so let us go hand in hand. You help me and I'll help you. We shall not be here very long ... so let us help one another while we may.
William Morris
#25. A good way to rid one's self of a sense of discomfort is to do something. That uneasy, dissatisfied feeling is actual force vibrating out of order; it may be turned to practical account by giving proper expression to its creative character.
William Morris
#26. 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.
William Morris
#28. A world made to be lost, -A bitter life 'twixt pain and nothing tost.
William Morris
#29. I have said as much as that the aim of art was to destroy the curse of labour by making work the pleasurable satisfaction of our impulse towards energy, and giving to that energy hope of producing something worth its exercise.
William Morris
#30. If we feel the least degradation in being amorous, or merry or hungry, or sleepy, we are so far bad animals & miserable men.
William Morris
#31. Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.
William Morris
#32. Love is enough: though the world be a-waning, And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining.
William Morris
#33. With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.
William Morris
#34. Love makes clear the eyes that else would never see: "Love makes blind the eyes to all but me and thee.
William Morris
#35. If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it.
William Morris
#37. Artists cannot help themselves; they are driven to create by their nature, but for that nature to truly thrive, we need to preserve the precious habitat in which that beauty can flourish.
William Morris
#38. Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.
William Morris
#39. The wind is not helpless for any man's need, Nor falleth the rain but for thistle and weed.
William Morris
#41. The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.
William Morris
#42. There is no excuse for doing anything which is not strikingly beautiful.
William Morris
#43. The lost and found the Cause hath crowned, The Day of Days is here.
William Morris
#44. So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die.
William Morris
#45. I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.
William Morris
#46. It is the childlike part of us that produces works of the imagination. When we were children time passed so slow with us that we seemed to have time for everything.
William Morris
#47. 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.
William Morris
#49. Architecture would lead us to all the arts, as it did with earlier mean: but if we despise it and take no note of how we are housed, the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed.
William Morris
#50. Forsooth, brethren, fellowship is heaven and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them.
William Morris
#51. Slayer of the winter, art thou here again? O welcome, thou that bring'st the summer nigh! The bitter wind makes not the victory vain. Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.
William Morris
#52. Art made by the people for the people, as a joy to the maker and the user,
William Morris
#53. 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.
William Morris
#55. 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.
William Morris
#56. By God! I will not tell you more to-day, Judge any way you will - what matters it?
William Morris
#57. If our houses, or clothes, our household furniture and utensils are not works of art, they are either wretched makeshifts, or, what is worse, degrading shams of better things.
William Morris
#58. Ornamental pattern work, to be raised above the contempt of reasonable men, must possess three qualities: beauty, imagination and order.
William Morris
#59. So with this Earthly Paradise it is, If ye will read aright, and pardon me, Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss Midmost the beating of the steely sea ...
William Morris
#60. I cannot suppose there is anybody here who would think it either a good life, or an amusing one, to sit with one's hands before one doing nothing - to live like a gentleman, as fools call it.
William Morris
#61. My work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another.
William Morris
#62. What is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent?
William Morris
#63. A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works.
William Morris
#64. Talk of inspiration is sheer nonsense; there is to such thing. It is mere a matter of craftsmanship.
William Morris
#65. Forgetfulness of grief I yet may gain;In some wise may come ending to my pain;It may be yet the Gods will have me glad!Yet, Love, I would that thee and pain I had!
William Morris
#66. Between complete socialism and communism there is no difference whatever in my mind.Communism is in fact the completion of socialism; when that ceases to be militant and becomes triumphant, it will be communism.
William Morris
#67. When Socialism comes, it may be in such a form that we won't like it.
William Morris
#68. If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris
#69. To happy folkAll heaviest words no more of meaning bearThan far-off bells saddening the Summer air.
William Morris
#70. As to the garden, it seems to me its chief fruit is-blackbirds.
William Morris
#71. There is no single policy to which one can point and say - this built the Morris business. I should think I must have made not less than one thousand decisions in each of the last ten years. The success of a business is the result of the proportion of right decisions by the executive in charge.
William Morris
#72. There was a knight came riding by
In early spring, when the roads were dry;
And he heard that lady sing at the noon,
Two red roses across the moon.
William Morris
#73. Now let us go, love, down the winding stair,
With fingers intertwined ...
William Morris
#74. I think the thing that impressed me is (AT&T CEO Michael) Armstrong's strategic vision and the fact that he's got John Malone (TCI's chairman) to go along. There's a real commitment to build a new AT&T.
William Morris
#75. It has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself
a convenient belief to those who live on the labour of others. But as to those on whom they live, I recommend them not to take it on trust, but to look into the matter a little deeper.
William Morris
#76. It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.
William Morris
#79. We are only the trustees for those who come after us.
William Morris
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