William Morris's Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

If you cannot learn to love real art at least learn to hate sham art.

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

Give me love and work - these two only.

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

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.

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

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.