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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

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William Morris
Age: 62 †
Born: 1834
Born: March 24
Died: 1896
Died: October 3
Wilcumestowe
William M. Morris
Must
Made
Degrading
Men
Makers
Labour
Worth
Making
Nothing

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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.
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Art made by the people for the people, as a joy to the maker and the user.
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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.
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Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.
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No pattern should be without some sort of meaning.
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Speak but one word to me.
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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.
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I half wish that I had not been born with a sense of romance and beauty in this accursed age.
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My work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another.
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Earth, left silent by the wind of night,Seems shrunken 'neath the gray unmeasured height.
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Love is enough: though the world be a-waning, And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining.
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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.
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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.
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Late February days and now, at last, Might you have thought that Winter's woe was past So fair the sky was and so soft the air.
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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
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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
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That talk of inspiration is sheer nonsense there is no such thing. It is a mere matter of craftsmanship.
William Morris
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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
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Forgetfulness of grief I yet may gainIn some wise may come ending to my painIt may be yet the Gods will have me glad!Yet, Love, I would that thee and pain I had!
William Morris
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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