William Morris

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.”

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”