William Morris Quotes

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

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

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

Art made by the people for the people, as a joy to the maker and the user.

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.

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

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

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

Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.

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

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

No pattern should be without some sort of meaning.

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.

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

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

Give me love and work - these two only.

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

It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.

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

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

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.

It is the relationship between the physical environment and the environed organism, between physiography and ontography (to coin a term), that constitutes the essential principles of geography today.

...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.

That talk of inspiration is sheer nonsense; there is no such thing. It is a mere matter of craftsmanship.

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.

We are only the trustees for those who come after us.

I know a little garden close Set thick with lily and red rose, Where I would wander if I might From dewy dawn to dewy night. And have one with me wandering.

Don't think too much of style.

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.

If we feel the least degradation in being amorous, or merry or hungry, or sleepy, we are so far bad animals & miserable men.

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.

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.

And the deeds that ye do upon this earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them.

Not on one strand are all life's jewels strung.

The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her.

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.

Don't talk of what you are 'going to do!' Do it!

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

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

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

You are to draw not reality, but the appearance of reality!

Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures.

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.

Imagination comes in after we have experience.

Give up the idea of 'color' for awhile! Consider masses - values, only... One dark and one light place in every picture.

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

Believe that time is going to help you do what you want.

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

You can always draw as well as you know how to. I flatter myself that I feel more than I express on canvas; but I know that is not so.

You can't do a fine thing without having seen fine examples.