William Morris Quotes

Go back again, now you have seen us, and your outward eyes have learned that in spite of all the infallible maxims of your day there is yet a time of rest in store for the world, when mastery has changed into fellowship — but not before. Go back again, then, and while you live you will see all round you people engaged in making others live lives which are not their own, while they themselves care nothing for their own real lives — men who hate life though they fear death. Go back and be the happier for having seen us, for having added a little hope to your struggle. Go on living while you may, striving, with whatsoever pain and labour needs must be, to build up little by little the new day of fellowship, and rest, and happiness.

Rejoice, lest pleasureless ye die. Within a little time must ye go by. Stretch forth your open hands, and while ye live Take [[all] the gifts that Death and Life may give!

How can you care about the image of a landscape, when you show by your deeds that you don't care for the landscape itself?

As he formed the words, the train stopped at his station, five minutes' walk from his own house, which stood on the banks of the Thames, a little way above an ugly suspension bridge. He went out of the station, still discontented and unhappy, muttering "If I could but see it! if I could but see it!" but had not gone many steps towards the river before (says our friend who tells the story) all that discontent and trouble seemed to slip off him.

Worthy work carries with it the hope of pleasure in rest, the hope of the pleasure in our using what it makes, and the hope of pleasure in our daily creative skill. All other work but this is worthless; it is slaves' work — mere toiling to live, that we may live to toil.

My work is, ... to bring before people's eyes the image of the thing my heart is filled with.

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

Slayer of the Winter, art thou here again? O welcome, thou that bring'st the Summer nigh! The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain, Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.

No pillager or wrecker had been there; It seemed that time had passed on otherwhere, Nor laid a finger on this hidden place Rich with the wealth of some forgotten race.

History remembers battles. I write to remember the hearts that fought them.

To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it. Does not our subject look important enough now? I say that without these arts, our rest would be vacant and uninteresting, our labour mere endurance, mere wearing away of body and mind.

For Queen Diana did my body change Into a fork-tongued dragon flesh and fell, And through the island nightly do I range, Or in the green sea mate with monsters strange, When in the middle of the moonlit night The sleepy mariner I do affright.

O surely this morning all sorrow is hidden, All battle is hushed for this even at least; And no one this noontide may hunger, unbidden To the flowers and the singing and the joy of your feast Where silent ye sit midst the world's tale increased.

C'est le mythe du commerce comme fin en soi, de l'homme fait pour le commerce et non l'inverse, qui a fait dépérir l'art, et tout l'appareillage de fortune auquel on a eu recours pour la mise en pratique de ce principe erroné. Les machines, les chemins de fer et le reste qui nous dominent tous à présent, auraient pu rester sous notre contrôle si nous n'avions pas décidé de rechercher le profit et une activité coûte que coûte, en instaurant quelque temps cette anarchie corrumpue et corruptrice qui a usurpé le nom de société.

Folk say, a wizard to a northern king At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show, That through one window men beheld the spring, And through another saw the summer glow, And through a third the fruited vines a-row, While still, unheard, but in its wonted way, Piped the drear wind of that December day. 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, Where tossed about all hearts of men must be; Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay, Not the poor singer of an empty day.