To happy folk All heaviest words no more of meaning bear Than far-off bells saddening the Summer air. - William Morris

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

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

Soon there will be nothing left except the lying dreams of history, the miserable wreckage of our museums and picture-galleries, and the carefully guarded interiors of our aesthetic drawing-rooms, unreal and foolish, fitting witnesses of the life of corruption that goes on there, so pinched and meagre and cowardly, with its concealment and ignoring, rather than restraint of, natural longings; which does not forbid the greedy indulgence in them if it can but be decently hidden.