William Morris Quotes

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

When I first came to America, I went into William Morris Endeavor for a meeting and I was like, "Yeah, I'm from Australia and I do comedy." I think that one of the reasons they signed me is because I wasn't like any other girl. Maybe girls don't get encouraged. The ones who get encouraged to move to Hollywood are the prettiest ones in their hometown of Iowa, or something. Whereas for me, where I come from in the western suburbs of Sydney, no one ever thought professional actors would come from there. Even my own family was like, "No one would want you on a show." ~ Rebel Wilson

Coming from the William Morris mailroom as I have, this book
is the truth of what I experienced, and it reminded me of all the
fun and craziness and fake drama that trained me for this
profession. It's hilarious, a bit crazy, and it should make anyone
wonder why people put their careers in the hands of these
idiotsand remember I'm one of them. If you have a child,
make sure he or she reads this before starting at the bottom-
anywhere. ~ Bernie Brillstein

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

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

...if these hours be dark, as indeed in many ways they are, at least do not let us sit deedless, like fools and fine gentlemen, thinking the common toil not good enough for us, and beaten by the muddle; but rather let us work like good fellows trying by some dim candle-light to set our workshop ready against to-morrow's daylight... ~ William Morris

The William Morris Agency handled me. In that business, you're only as good as your last picture. ~ Johnny Weissmuller

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

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

Believe that time is going to help you do what you want. ~ William Morris Hunt

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

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

Talk of inspiration is sheer nonsense; there is to such thing. It is mere a matter of craftsmanship. ~ William Morris

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

Beauty is that little something that fills the whole world, and is contained neither in a single straight nose, a long eyelash, nor a blue mountain. Some see it in a leg of mutton, others in a compound fracture; and to expect others to accept one's own definition of it is as absurd as to expect all humanity to use the same toilet-brush. ~ William Morris Hunt

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

You can't do a fine thing without having seen fine examples. ~ William Morris Hunt

A world made to be lost, -A bitter life 'twixt pain and nothing tost. ~ William Morris

How can you care about the image of a landscape, when you show by your deeds that you don't care for the landscape itself? ~ William Morris

You are to draw not reality, but the appearance of reality! ~ William Morris Hunt

How are things visible? Can you see an egg against a white background? Not by drawing a line around it can you make it evident. ~ William Morris Hunt

Like William Morris, Joe Hollis asks us to perceive paradise gardening as a juncture where artfulness directly serves life. In fact, we might go so far as to define this paradise as the place where art is indistinguishable from life, and where simplicity is codified as the best path for achieving happiness. ~ Jim Nollman

The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough? ~ William Morris

Speak but one word to me. ~ William Morris

The artist is an interpreter of Nature. People learn to love Nature through pictures. To the artist, nothing is in vain; nothing beneath his notice. If he is great enough, he will exalt every subject which he treats. ~ William Morris Hunt

What is nobler than a man wresting and wringing his bread from the stubborn soil by the sweat of his brow and the break of his back for his wife and children! ~ William Morris Hunt

Count on, rest not, for hope is dead. ~ William Morris

As an actor, you've worked very hard, and you've been doing this for 20-some years, and William Morris was never interested - or any studio, either - in your company or as an actor, and then 'God's Not Dead' happens, and now everyone calls you. ~ David A.R. White

It is for him that is lonely or in prison to dream of fellowship, but for him that is of a fellowship to do and not to dream. ~ William Morris

I am one of the graduates of the William Morris famous, famous mail room from the '60s. ~ Irwin Winkler

I can see myself still myself all along the way I have gone. - Lady Abundance ~ William Morris

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

Elaboration is not beauty, and sand-paper never finished a piece of bad work. ~ William Morris Hunt

It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last. ~ William Morris

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

Do not be deceived by the outside appearance of order in our plutocratic society. It fares with it as it does with the older norms of war, that there is an outside look of quite wonderful order about it; how neat and comforting the steady march of the regiment; how quiet and respectable the sergeants look; how clean the polished cannon ... the looks of adjutant and sergeant as innocent-looking as may be, nay, the very orders for destruction and plunder are given with a quiet precision which seems the very token of a good conscience; this is the mask that lies before the ruined cornfield and the burning cottage, and mangled bodies, the untimely death of worthy men, the desolated home. ~ William Morris

I thought I'd be a success even back in the mailroom at William Morris. ~ David Geffen

We are only the trustees for those who come after us. ~ William Morris

Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures. ~ William Morris

How are we going to make painters by lecturing to them? We are going to make questioners, doubters, and talkers. We are going to make painters by painting ourselves, and by showing the paintings of others. By working frankly from our convictions, we are going to make them work frankly from theirs. ~ William Morris Hunt

I am accursed and beguiled; and I wander round and round in a tangle that I may never escape from. I am not far from deeming that this is a land of dreams made for my beguiling. Or has the earth become so full of lies, that there is no room amidst them for a true man to stand upon his feet and go his ways? ~ William Morris

From out the throng and stress of lies, from out the painful noise of sighs, one voice of comfort seems to rise: It is the meaner part that dies. ~ William Morris

When I landed in L.A. in early '89, William Morris decided to take me on to see if I could get any jobs. I was cast in a TV movie called Protected Surf, and made $30,000 in four weeks, and I decided I needed to take acting seriously, because I had never made that much money in a year, much less four weeks. That's when I decided I thought I could make a career out of it. ~ Thomas Haden Church

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

I had a lot of success from the start. I never really was tested for long periods of time. I got my first professional job while I was a senior in college. I signed with the William Morris Agency before I graduated. ~ Denzel Washington

Now let us go, love, down the winding stair,
With fingers intertwined ... ~ William Morris

Let me give you a few simple rules for learning to draw. First, see of what shape the whole thing is. Next, put in the line that marks the movement of the whole. Don't have more than one movement in a figure; you can't patch parts together. Simple lines; then simple values. Establish the fact of the whole. Is it square, oblong, cube, or what is it? ~ William Morris Hunt

I was so naive I didn't even know about agents. I telephoned the William Morris agency and asked to speak to Mr. Morris. I expected Bill Morris to be waiting for my call. ~ Kirstie Alley

I cannot suppose there is anybody here who would think it either a good life, or an amusing one, to sit with one's hands before one doing nothing - to live like a gentleman, as fools call it. ~ William Morris

Not every visitor was enchanted. William Morris, the future designer and aesthete, then aged seventeen, was so appalled by what he saw as the exhibition's lack of taste and veneration of excess that he staggered from the building and was sick in the bushes. ~ Bill Bryson

A pattern is either right or wrong ... it is no stronger than its weakest point. ~ William Morris

And this love of definite conception, this clearness of vision, this artistic sense of limit, is the characteristic of all great work and poetry; of the vision of Homer as of the vision of Dante, of Keats and William Morris as of Chaucer and Theocritus. It lies at the base of all noble, realistic and romantic work as opposed to the colourless and empty abstractions of our own eighteenth-century poets and of the classical dramatists of France, or of the vague spiritualities of the German sentimental school: opposed, too, to that spirit of transcendentalism which also was root and flower itself of the great Revolution, underlying the impassioned contemplation of Wordsworth and giving wings and fire to the eagle- like flight of Shelley, and which in the sphere of philosophy, though displaced by the materialism and positiveness of our day, bequeathed two great schools of thought, the school of Newman to Oxford, the school of Emerson to America. Yet is this spirit of transcendentalism alien to the spirit of art. For the artist can accept no sphere of life in exchange for life itself. For him there is no escape from the bondage of the earth: there is not even the desire of escape. He is indeed the only true realist: symbolism, which is the essence of the transcendental spirit, is alien to him. The metaphysical mind of Asia will create for itself the monstrous, many-breasted idol of Ephesus, but to the Greek, pure artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual life which conforms ~ Oscar Wilde

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

The Shakers also have one golden rule – back to William Morris: Do not make that which is not useful. And so it was their interpretation that all useful things should also be beautiful. God, as architect Mies van der Rohe said, was in the details and, you never know, an angel may come one day and sit on that chair – it had to be worthy of such an event. ~ Alan Moore

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

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

Don't think too much of style. ~ William Morris

The dining-room was in the good taste of the period. It was very severe. There was a high dado of white wood and a green paper on which were etchings by Whistler in neat black frames. The green curtains with their peacock design, hung in straight lines, and the green carpet, in the pattern of which pale rabbits frolicked among leafy trees, suggested the influence of William Morris. There was blue delft on the chimneypiece. At that time there must have been five hundred dining-rooms in London decorated in exactly the same manner. It was chaste, artistic, and dull. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

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

Painting is the only universal language. All nature is creation's picture book. Painting alone can describe every thing which can be seen, and suggest every emotion which can be felt. Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is man's only lasting monument. ~ William Morris Hunt

Inspiration is nothing without work. ~ William Morris Hunt

Strive for simplicity! Don't have the face a checkerboard of tints! Use such colors as nature uses, but not try to keep them distinct! Your work may be called monotonous, but one tone is better than many which do not harmonize. ~ William Morris Hunt

Thus then lived this folk in much plenty and ease of life, though not delicately nor desiring things out of measure. They wrought with their hands and wearied themselves; and they rested from their toil and feasted and were merry: to-morrow was not a burden to them, nor yesterday a thing which they would fain forget: life shamed them not, nor did death make them afraid. ~ William Morris

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

The greatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere. ~ William Morris

If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. ~ William Morris

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

What is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent? ~ William Morris

My work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another. ~ William Morris

Building on the work of George Macdonald, William Morris and Edward Plunkett, what became known as high fantasy was more or less invented by J. R. R. Tolkien. ~ Adrian McKinty

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things
like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)
I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.
Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! ~ Terri Windling

Compare constantly, lines and angles ... Hold looking-glass before your model and your drawing. Take a second's glance only, and see if the impression be the same. If it be not, ask, 'What is the difference? ~ William Morris Hunt

There was no reason whatever to make a wholesale choice between handicraft and machine production: between a single contemporary part of the technological pool and all the other past accumulations. But there was a genuine reason to maintain as many diverse units in this pool as possible, in order to increase the range of both human choices and technological inventiveness. Many of the machines of the nineteenth century, as Kropotkin pointed out, were admirable auxiliaries to handicraft processes, once they could be scaled, like the efficient small electric motor, to the small workshop and the personally controlled operation. William Morris and his colleagues, who almost single-handed salvaged and restored one ancient craft after another, by personally mastering the arts of dyeing, weaving, embroidering, printing, glass-painting, paper-making, book-binding, showed superior technological insight to those who scoffed at their romanticism. ~ Lewis Mumford

There is no excuse for doing anything which is not strikingly beautiful. ~ William Morris

Art made by the people for the people, as a joy to the maker and the user, ~ William Morris

To happy folkAll heaviest words no more of meaning bearThan far-off bells saddening the Summer air. ~ William Morris

Art teaches you the philosophy of life, and if you can't learn it from art, you can't learn it at all. It shows you that there is no perfection. There is light, and there is shadow. Everything is in half tint. ~ William Morris Hunt

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

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

The mythology of a people is far more than a collection of pretty or terrifying fables to be retold in carefully bowdlerized form to our schoolchildren. It is the comment of the men of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind, their model for social behaviour, and their attempt to define in stories of gods and demons their perception of the inner realities. We can learn much from the mythologies of earlier peoples if we have the humility to respect ways of thought widely differing from our own. In certain respects we may be far cleverer than they, but not necessarily wiser. We cannot return to the mythological thinking of an earlier age; it is beyond our reach, like the vanished world of childhood. Even if we feel a nostalgic longing for the past, like that of Jon Keats for Ancient Greece of William Morris for medieval England, there is now no way of entry. The Nazis tries to revive the myths of ancient Germany in their ideology, but such an attempt could only lead to sterility and moral suicide. We cannot deny the demands of our own age, but this need not prevent us turning to the faith of another age with sympathetic understanding, and recapturing imaginatively some of its vanished power. It will even help us view more clearly the assumptions and beliefs of our own time ~ H. R. Ellis Davidson

Most of us live for the critic, and he lives on us. He doesn't sacrifice himself. He gets so much a line for writing a criticism. If the birds should read the newspapers, they would all take to changing their notes. The parrots would exchange with the nightingales, and what a farce it would be! ~ William Morris Hunt

Give up the idea of 'color' for awhile! Consider masses - values, only ... One dark and one light place in every picture. ~ William Morris Hunt

When Socialism comes, it may be in such a form that we won't like it. ~ William Morris

The more clearly the immensely speculative nature of geological science is recognized, the easier it becomes to remodel our concepts of any inferred terrestrial conditions and processes in order to make outrages upon them not outrageous. ~ William Morris Davis

It gives a fellow an awful shiver to hear the first shovelful of dirt and gravel rattle down upon the coffin; but after it is covered, it falls gently and makes no sound. The feeling of rest is perfect. There's no more nagging, no more pain! ~ William Morris Hunt

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

The wind is not helpless for any man's need, Nor falleth the rain but for thistle and weed. ~ William Morris

Once established, an original river advances through its long life, manifesting certain peculiarities of youth, maturity and old age, by which its successive stages of growth may be recognized without much difficulty. ~ William Morris Davis

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

Don't put needless expense into painting a head! Don't try to match tints! Rose and pearly colours blend into each other so that no one can unite them if painted separately. Keep the impression of your subject as one thing! ~ William Morris Hunt

The heart desires, the hand refrains. The Godhead fires, the soul attains. ~ William Morris

It is the relationship between the physical environment and the environed organism, between physiography and ontography (to coin a term), that constitutes the essential principles of geography today. ~ William Morris Davis

It's no easy matter to paint a background. I venture to say that the old painters had more difficulty with their grounds than with their figures. You know the story of Vandyke brought to Rubens with this recommendation: 'He already knows how to paint a background.' 'That is more than I can do!' was the reply. ~ William Morris Hunt

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

The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. ~ William Morris

Mr. Morris's poem is ushered into the world with a very florid birthday speech from the pen of the author of the too famous Poems and Ballads, - a circumstance, we apprehend, in no small degree prejudicial to its success. But we hasten to assure all persons whom the knowledge of Mr. Swinburne's enthusiasm may have led to mistrust the character of the work, that it has to our perception nothing in common with this gentleman's own productions, and that his article proves very little more than that his sympathies are wiser than his performance. If Mr. Morris's poem may be said to remind us of the manner of any other writer, it is simply of that of Chaucer; and to resemble Chaucer is a great safeguard against resembling Swinburne. ~ Henry James

No pattern should be without some sort of meaning. ~ William Morris

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

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

The books I would like to print are the books I love to read and keep. ~ William Morris