William Morris Quotes
William Morris was a renowned artist, craftsman, and writer during the late 1800s. He was one of the key influencer of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which sought to revive traditional craftsmanship techniques. Morris’ work is celebrated for its beauty and simplicity, and his quotes are just as inspiring. Here are some of the best quotes from William Morris that will uplift and inspire you.
-
We shall not be happy unless we live like good animals, unless we enjoy the exercise of the ordinary functions of life: eating, sleeping, loving, walking, running, swimming, riding, sailing.
William Morris -
Give me love and work – these two only.
William Morris -
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.
William Morris -
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris -
History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.
William Morris -
We are living in a epoch where there is combat between commercialism, or the system of reckless waste, and communism, or the system of neighbourly common sense.
William Morris -
Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.
William Morris -
A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works.
William Morris -
It is right and necessary that all should have work to do which shall be worth doing and be of itself pleasant to do, and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious.
William Morris
-
I don’t remember being taught to read, and by the time I was seven years old, I had read a very great many books, good, bad, and indifferent.
William Morris -
To do nothing but grumble and not to act – that is throwing away one’s life.
William Morris -
I can’t enter into politico-social subjects with any interest, for on the whole, I see that things are in a muddle, and I have no power or vocation to set them right in ever so little a degree.
William Morris -
Not on one strand are all life’s jewels strung.
William Morris -
I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.
William Morris -
I want a real revolution, a real change in society: society, a great organic mass of well-regulated forces used for the bringing-about a happy life for all.
William Morris -
How often it consoles me to think of barbarism once more flooding the world, and real feelings and passions, however rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies.
William Morris -
We shall not be happy unless we live like good animals, unless we enjoy the exercise of the ordinary functions of life: eating, sleeping, loving, walking, running, swimming, riding, sailing.
William Morris
-
We are living in a epoch where there is combat between commercialism, or the system of reckless waste, and communism, or the system of neighbourly common sense.
William Morris -
Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.
William Morris -
A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works.
William Morris -
It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.
William Morris -
If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it.
William Morris -
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.
William Morris -
No man is good enough to be another’s master.
William Morris -
The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.
William Morris
