Top 70 William Morris Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— William Morris

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2. “If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

— William Morris

3. “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

4. “Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures.”

— William Morris

5. “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

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

— William Morris

7. “If i were asked to say what is at once the most important production of Art and the thing most to be longed for, I should answer, A beautiful House.”

— William Morris

8. “Talk of inspiration is sheer nonsense; there is to such thing. It is mere a matter of craftsmanship.”

— William Morris

9. “Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.”

— William Morris

10. “No pattern should be without some sort of meaning.”

— William Morris

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

— William Morris

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

— William Morris

13. “My work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another.”

— William Morris

14. “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

15. “Give me love and work – these two only.”

— William Morris

16. “Don’t think too much of style.”

— William Morris

17. “We are only the trustees for those who come after us.”

— William Morris

18. “The greatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere.”

— William Morris

19. “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

20. “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

21. “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

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

— William Morris

23. “When Socialism comes, it may be in such a form that we won’t like it.”

— William Morris

24. “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

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

— William Morris

26. “Let tomorrow cross its own rivers.”

— William Morris

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

— William Morris

28. “There is no excuse for doing anything which is not strikingly beautiful.”

— William Morris

29. “All rooms ought to look as if they were lived in, and to have so to say, a friendly welcome ready for the incomer.”

— William Morris

30. “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

31. “Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.”

— William Morris

32. “Not on one strand are all life’s jewels strung.”

— William Morris

33. “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

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

— William Morris

35. “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

36. “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

37. “The heart desires, the hand refrains. The Godhead fires, the soul attains.”

— William Morris

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

— William Morris

39. “If a chap can’t compose an epic poem while he’s weaving tapestry, he had better shut up, he’ll never do any good at all.”

— William Morris

40. “As to the garden, it seems to me its chief fruit is-blackbirds.”

— William Morris

41. “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

42. “If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream.”

— William Morris

43. “Speak but one word to me.”

— William Morris

44. “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

45. “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

46. “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

47. “He trembled with his head hung low.”

— William Morris

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

— William Morris

49. “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

50. “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.”

— William Morris