Quotes by William Morris - Page 2

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.
William Morris / Artist
Life
Green
Knowing
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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.
William Morris / Artist
Encouragement
Hands
Long
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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.
William Morris / Artist
Flower
Garden
Night
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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 / Artist
Happy Life
Mass
Revolution
Life Change Society
Forces
Organic
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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.
William Morris / Artist
Forgiveness
Bliss
Paradise
Sea
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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 / Artist
Combat
Commercialism
Common
Common Sense
Communism
Epoch
Reckless
Waste
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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!
William Morris / Artist
Wise
Grief
Pain
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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.
William Morris / Artist
Imagination
Children
Produce
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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 / Artist
Barbarism
Flooding
Wretched
World Me More
Consoles
However
Once More
Passions
Rudimentary
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...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.
William Morris / Artist
Art
Clothes
House
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Slayer of the winter, art thou here again? O welcome, thou that bring'st the summer nigh! The bitter wind makes not the victory vain. Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.
William Morris / Artist
Art
Summer
Winter
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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.
William Morris / Artist
Art
Hard Times
Mean
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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.
William Morris / Artist
Artist
Habitat
Needs
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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 / Artist
Running
Eating
Exercise
Ordinary
Riding
Sailing
Swimming
Walking
Animals
Be Happy
Life Good Exercise
Functions
Shall
Sleeping
Unless
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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 / Artist
Muddle
Subjects
Vocation
Degree
Enter
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Beauty, which is what is meant by art, using the word in its widest sense, is, I contend, no mere accident to human life, which people can take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity of life.
William Morris / Artist
Art
Human Life
People
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I think the thing that impressed me is (AT&T CEO Michael) Armstrong's strategic vision and the fact that he's got John Malone (TCI's chairman) to go along. There's a real commitment to build a new AT&T.
William Morris / Artist
Commitment
Real
Thinking
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Forsooth, brethren, fellowship is heaven and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them.
William Morris / Artist
Friendship
Earth
Heaven
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Between complete socialism and communism there is no difference whatever in my mind.Communism is in fact the completion of socialism; when that ceases to be militant and becomes triumphant, it will be communism.
William Morris / Artist
Differences
Facts
Mind
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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 / Artist
Imagination
Men
Exercise
Feels
Memories
Soul
Works
Exist
Energies
Exercising
Memory
Wills
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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 / Artist
Conditions
Pleasant
Work Done Doing
Necessary
Neither
Nor
Shall
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I have said as much as that the aim of art was to destroy the curse of labour by making work the pleasurable satisfaction of our impulse towards energy, and giving to that energy hope of producing something worth its exercise.
William Morris / Artist
Art
Exercise
Giving
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A good way to rid one's self of a sense of discomfort is to do something. That uneasy, dissatisfied feeling is actual force vibrating out of order; it may be turned to practical account by giving proper expression to its creative character.
William Morris / Artist
Character
Expression
Self
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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 / Artist
Art
Civilization
Competition
Degradation
Doomed
Life Goes On
Mean
Die
Arts
Life Art Long
Exchange
Production
Surely
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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 / Artist
Men
Battle
Defeat
Fighting
Names
Spite
Turns
Name
Meant
Fight
Fought
Lose
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It has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself -- a convenient belief to those who live on the labour of others. But as to those on whom they live, I recommend them not to take it on trust, but to look into the matter a little deeper.
William Morris / Artist
Work
Littles
Matter
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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.
William Morris / Artist
Deceitful
Impulse
Phases
Alter
Bitten
Catch
Towards
Resist
Sordid
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With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.
William Morris / Artist
Men
Arrogance Of Youth
Blessed
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There is no single policy to which one can point and say - this built the Morris business. I should think I must have made not less than one thousand decisions in each of the last ten years. The success of a business is the result of the proportion of right decisions by the executive in charge.
William Morris / Artist
Decision
Thinking
Years
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Do not be afraid of large patterns, if properly designed they are more restful to the eye than small ones: on the whole, a pattern where the structure is large and the details much broken up is the most useful...very small rooms, as well as very large ones, look better ornamented with large patterns.
William Morris / Artist
Broken
Eye
Small Rooms
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Large or small, [the garden] should be orderly and rich. It should be well fenced from the outside world. It should by no means imitate either the willfulness or the wildness of nature, but should look like a thing never to be seen except near the house. It should, in fact, look like part of the house.
William Morris / Artist
Garden
House
Mean
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Another thing much too commonly seen, is an aberration of the human mind which otherwise I should have been ashamed to warn you of. It is technically called carpet-gardening. Need I explain it further? I had rather not, for when I think of it, even when I am quite alone, I blush with shame at the thought.
William Morris / Artist
Flower
Should Have
Thinking
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If there is a reason for keeping the wall very quiet, choose a pattern that works all over without pronounced lines...Put very succinctly, architectural effect depends upon a nice balance of horizontal, vertical and oblique. No rules can say how much of each; so nothing can really take the place of feeling and good judgement.
William Morris / Artist
Judgement
Nice
Wall
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Yea, I have looked, and seen November there; The changeless seal of change it seemed to be, Fair death of things that, living once, were fair; Bright sign of loneliness too great for me, Strange image of the dread eternity, In whose void patience how can these have part, These outstretched feverish hands, this restless heart?
William Morris / Artist
Hands
Heart
Loneliness
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Speak not, move not, but listen, the sky is full of gold. No ripple on the river, no stir in field or fold, All gleams but naught doth glisten, but the far-off unseen sea. Forget days past, heart broken, put all memory by! No grief on the green hillside, no pity in the sky, Joy that may not be spoken fills mead and flower and tree.
William Morris / Artist
Flower
Memories
Moving
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You may hang your walls with tapestry insread of whitewash or paper; or you may cover them with mosaic; or have them frescoed by a great painter: all this is not luxury, if it be done for beauty's sake, and not for show: it does not break our golden rule: Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris / Artist
Beautiful
Believe
Wall
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I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love. It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigor of the earlier world?
William Morris / Artist
Art
Ornaments
Restoration
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Mastership hath many shifts whereby it striveth to keep itself alive in the world. And now hear a marvel: whereas thou sayest these two times that out of one man ye may get but one man's work, in days to come one man shall do the work of a hundred men - yea, of a thousand or more: and this is the shift of mastership that shall make many masters and many rich men.
William Morris / Artist
Men
Alive
Two
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Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?
William Morris / Artist
Thinking
Two
Wall
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In Prison Wearily, drearily, Half the day long, Flap the great banners High over the stone; Strangely and eerily Sounds the wind's song, Bending the banner-poles. While, all alone, Watching the loophole's spark, Lie I, with life all dark, Feet tethered, hands fettered Fast to the stone, The grim walls, square lettered With prisoned men's groan. Still strain the banner-poles Through the wind's song, Westward the banner rolls Over my wrong.
William Morris / Artist
Life
Song
Wall
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What I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brainslack brain workers, nor heartsick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all - the realisation at last of the meaning of the word 'commonwealth.'
William Morris / Artist
Men
Heart
Mean
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Love is Enough Love is enough: though the world be a-waning, And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining, Though the skies be too dark for dim eyes to discover The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder, Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder, And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over, Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter: The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.
William Morris / Artist
Fear
Dark
Eye
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So I say, if you cannot learn to love real art; at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. It is not because the wretched thing is so ugly and silly and useless that I ask you to cast it from you; it is much more because these are but the outward symbols of the poison that lies within them; look through them and see all that has gone to their fashioning, and you will see how vain labour, and sorrow, and disgrace have been their companions from the first-and all this for trifles that no man really needs!
William Morris / Artist
Art
Hate
Lying
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One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.
William Morris / Artist
Men
War
Real
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Whiles in the early Winter eve We pass amid the gathering night Some homestead that we had to leave Years past; and see its candles bright Shine in the room beside the door Where we were merry years agone But now must never enter more, As still the dark road drives us on. E'en so the world of men may turn At even of some hurried day And see the ancient glimmer burn Across the waste that hath no way; Then with that faint light in its eyes A while I bid it linger near And nurse in wavering memories The bitter-sweet of days that were.
William Morris / Artist
Eye
Memories
Sweet
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William Morris Quotes - Page 2

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