William Morris: Trending quotes

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William Morris: 238 quotes10 likes

“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.”

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

“The wanderer trembled when he saw all this,
Because he deemed by magic it was wrought;
Yet in his heart a longing for some bliss
Whereof the hard and changing world knows nought,
Arose and urged him on, and dimmed the thought
That there perchance some devil lurked to slay
The heedless wanderer from the light of day”

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

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

Love is Enough (1872), Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow

“The majesty
That from man's soul looks through his eager eyes.”

Life and Death of Jason, Book xiii, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“For Queen Diana did my body change
Into a fork-tongued dragon flesh and fell,
And through the island nightly do I range,
Or in the green sea mate with monsters strange,
When in the middle of the moonlit night
The sleepy mariner I do affright.”

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

“O hearken the words of his voice of compassion:
"Come cling round about me, ye faithful who sicken
Of the weary unrest and the world's passing fashions!
As the rain in mid-morning your troubles shall thicken,
But surely within you some Godhead doth quicken,
As ye cry to me heeding, and leading you home."”

Love is Enough (1872), Song IX: Ho Ye Who Seek Saving

“The greatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere.”

The Beauty of Life (1880).

“It is right and necessary that all men 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.”

Art and Socialism (1884)

“Slayer of the Winter, art thou here again?
O welcome, thou that bring'st the Summer nigh!
The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain,
Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.”

"March".
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)

“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.”

Other Days, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Meanwhile the dragon, seeing him clean gone,
Followed him not, but crying horribly,
Caught up within her jaws a block of stone
And ground it into powder, then turned she,
With cries that folk could hear far out at sea,
And reached the treasure set apart of old,
To brood above the hidden heaps of gold.”

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

“I think that to all living things there is a pleasure in the exercise of their energies, and that even beasts rejoice in being lithe and swift and strong. But 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. Not only his own thoughts, but the thoughts of the men of past ages guide his hands; and, as a part of the human race, he creates. If we work thus we shall be men, and our days will be happy and eventful.”

Signs of Change (1888), Useful Work versus Useless Toil

“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.”

William Morris book A Dream of John Ball

Source: A Dream of John Ball (1886), Ch. 4: The Voice of John Ball

“Drowsy I lie, no folk at my command,
Who once was called the Lady of the Land;
Who might have bought a kingdom with a kiss,
Yea, half the world with such a sight as this.”

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

“No pillager or wrecker had been there;
It seemed that time had passed on otherwhere,
Nor laid a finger on this hidden place
Rich with the wealth of some forgotten race.”

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

“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.”

This has sometimes appeared in paraphrased form as: "The aim of art is 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 the exercise".
Signs of Change (1888), The Aims of Art

“There sat a woman, whose wet tresses rolled
On to the floor in waves of gleaming gold,
Cast back from such a form as, erewhile shown
To one poor shepherd, lighted up Troy town.”

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

“To happy folk
All heaviest words no more of meaning bear
Than far-off bells saddening the Summer air.”

"The Hill of Venus".
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)

“The heavy trouble, the bewildering care
That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
These idle verses have no power to bear;
So let em sing of names rememberèd,
Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead,
Or long time take their memory quite away
From us poor singers of an empty day.”

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), Apology

“If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream.”

William Morris book News from Nowhere

News from Nowhere (1890)