William Morris


English Poet, Artist, Textile Designer, Libertarian Socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Author Quotes

Till the resting of hours: fresh are thy feet and with dreams thine eyes glistening.


A fearful thing stood at the cloister's end and eyed him for a while, then 'gan to wend adown the cloisters, and began again that rattling, and the moan like fiends in pain. And as it came on towards him, with its teeth the body of a slain goat did it tear, the blood whereof in its hot jaws did seethe, and on its tongue he saw the smoking hair; then his heart sank, and standing trembling there, throughout his mind wild thoughts and fearful ran: "some fiend she was," he said, "the bane of man." yet he abode her still, although his blood curdled within him: the thing dropped the goat, and creeping on, came close to where he stood, and raised its head to him and wrinkled throat. Then he cried out and wildly at her smote, shutting his eyes, and turned and from the place ran swiftly, with a white and ghastly face.


Earth, left silent by the wind of night, seems shrunken 'neath the gray unmeasured height.


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 and if I were further asked to name the production next in importance and the thing next to be longed for I should answer A beautiful Book. To enjoy good houses and good books in self-respect and decent comfort, seems to me to be the pleasurable end towards which all societies of human beings ought now to struggle.


Masters, I have to tell a tale of woe, A tale of folly and of wasted life, Hope against hope, the bitter dregs of strife, Ending, where all things end, in death at last.

O surely this morning all sorrow is hidden, all battle is hushed for this even at least; and no one this noontide may hunger, unbidden to the flowers and the singing and the joy of your feast where silent ye sit midst the world's tale increased.

Soon there will be nothing left except the lying dreams of history, the miserable wreckage of our museums and picture-galleries, and the carefully guarded interiors of our aesthetic drawing-rooms, unreal and foolish, fitting witnesses of the life of corruption that goes on there, so pinched and meagre and cowardly, with its concealment and ignoring, rather than restraint of, natural longings; which does not forbid the greedy indulgence in them if it can but be decently hidden.


To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it. Does not our subject look important enough now? I say that without these arts, our rest would be vacant and uninteresting, our labor mere endurance, mere wearing away of body and mind.



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.

Eve shall kiss night, and the leaves stir like rain as the wind stealeth light o'er the grass of the plain. Unseen are thine eyes mid the dreamy night's sleeping, and on my mouth there lies

He did not die in the night, He did not die in the day, But in the morning twilight His spirit passed away.

If I were to work ten hours a day at work I despised and hated, I should spend my leisure I hope â€” in political agitation, but I fear â€” in drinking.

Join hope to our hope and blend sorrow with sorrow,And seek for men's love in the short days of life.

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 â€” yea, of a thousand or more: and this is the shift of mastership that shall make many masters and many rich men.

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.

Speak but one word to me over the corn, over the tender, bowed locks of the corn.


To happy folk all heaviest words no more of meaning bear than far-off bells saddening the Summer air.

Author Picture
First Name
Last Name
Birth Date
Death Date
