William Morris
No man is good enough to be another's master.Collection: Good
I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Change
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.Collection: Art
If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it.Collection: Art
Give me love and work - these two only.Collection: Work
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.Collection: Home
The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.Collection: Future
Not on one strand are all life's jewels strung.Collection: Inspirational
History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.Collection: Art
It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.Collection: Experience
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.Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Power
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.Collection: Change
The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Men
The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?
I am going, if I can, to be an architect, and I am too old already, and there is no time to lose.
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.
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.
To do nothing but grumble and not to act - that is throwing away one's life.
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.
I don't remember being taught to read, and by the time I was seven years old, I had read a very great many books, good, bad, and indifferent.
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.
Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.
Art made by the people for the people, as a joy to the maker and the user.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Encouragement
There is no excuse for doing anything which is not strikingly beautiful.Collection: Beautiful
No pattern should be without some sort of meaning.Collection: Design
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.Collection: Artist
My work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Beautiful
We are only the trustees for those who come after us.Collection: Trustees
Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.Collection: Simple
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.'Collection: Mean
The greatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere.Collection: Art
Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.Collection: Men
What is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent?Collection: Artist
All rooms ought to look as if they were lived in, and to have so to say, a friendly welcome ready for the incomer.Collection: Friendly
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.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Character
Ornamental pattern work, to be raised above the contempt of reasonable men, must possess three qualities: beauty, imagination and order.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Flower
Love is enough: though the world be a-waning, And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining.Collection: Love
As to the garden, it seems to me its chief fruit is-blackbirds.Collection: Garden
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.Collection: Friendship
And the deeds that ye do upon this earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them.Collection: Earth
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.Collection: Forgiveness