William Morris Quotes

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

If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream.

Whiles in the early Winter eve
We pass amid the gathering night
Some homestead that we had to leave
Years past; and see its candles bright
Shine in the room beside the door
Where we were merry years agone
But now must never enter more,
As still the dark road drives us on.
E'en so the world of men may turn
At even of some hurried day
And see the ancient glimmer burn
Across the waste that hath no way;
Then with that faint light in its eyes
A while I bid it linger near
And nurse in wavering memories
The bitter-sweet of days that were.

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

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.

Let tomorrow cross its own rivers.

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.

...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...

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?

Do not be deceived by the outside appearance of order in our plutocratic society. It fares with it as it does with the older norms of war, that there is an outside look of quite wonderful order about it; how neat and comforting the steady march of the regiment; how quiet and respectable the sergeants look; how clean the polished cannon ... the looks of adjutant and sergeant as innocent-looking as may be, nay, the very orders for destruction and plunder are given with a quiet precision which seems the very token of a good conscience; this is the mask that lies before the ruined cornfield and the burning cottage, and mangled bodies, the untimely death of worthy men, the desolated home.

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

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

Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart,

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

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