Quotes from William Morris

The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?

A world made to be lost, - A bitter life 'twixt pain and nothing tost.

Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant; Life we have loved, through green leaf and through sere, Though still the less we knew of its intent.

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.

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.

Happy as we are, times may alter; we may be bitten with some impulse towards change, and many things may seem too wonderful for us to resist, too exciting not to catch at, if we do not know that they are but phases of what has been before and withal ruinous, deceitful, and sordid.

To do nothing but grumble and not to act - that is throwing away one's life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it.

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

Forgetfulness of grief I yet may gain;In some wise may come ending to my pain;It may be yet the Gods will have me glad!Yet, Love, I would that thee and pain I had!

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

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.

When Socialism comes, it may be in such a form that we won't like it.

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

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

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

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

Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures.