Quotes by 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, a...”

“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.”

“The books I would like to print are the books I love to read and keep.”

“How can you care about the image of a landscape, when you show by your deeds that you don't care for the landscape itself?”

“Let tomorrow cross its own rivers.”

“OctoberO love, turn from the changing sea and gaze,Down these grey slopes, upon the year grown old,A-dying 'mid the autumn-scented hazeThat hangeth o'er the hollow in the wold,Where the wind-bitten...”

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

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

“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.”

“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 he...”

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

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

“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,...”

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

“Painting is the only universal language. All nature is creation's picture book. Painting alone can describe every thing which can be seen, and suggest every emotion which can be felt. Art reaches b...”

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

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

“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.”

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”