William Morris Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Large or small, [the garden] should be orderly and rich. It should be well fenced from the outside world. It should by no means imitate either the willfulness or the wildness of nature, but should look like a thing never to be seen except near the house. It should, in fact, look like part of the house.

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

Another thing much too commonly seen, is an aberration of the human mind which otherwise I should have been ashamed to warn you of. It is technically called carpet-gardening. Need I explain it further? I had rather not, for when I think of it, even when I am quite alone, I blush with shame at the thought.

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.

One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.

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

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.

What I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain­slack brain workers, nor heart­sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all - the realisation at last of the meaning of the word 'commonwealth.'

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures.

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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