William Morris citations (119 citations, Page 4)

William Morris: 119 citations 0 J'aime

William Morris: Citations en anglais

“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.”

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William Morris

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.”

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William Morris

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.”

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William Morris livre 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.”

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William Morris

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.”

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William Morris

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.”

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William Morris

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.”

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William Morris

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.”

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William Morris

"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.”

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William Morris

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.”

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William Morris livre News from Nowhere

News from Nowhere (1890)

“Now such an one for daughter Creon had
As maketh wise men fools and young men mad.”

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William Morris

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

“And then the image, that well-nigh erased
Over the castle-gate he did behold,
Above a door well wrought in coloured gold
Again he saw; a naked girl with wings
Enfolded in a serpent's scaly rings.”

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William Morris

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

“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.”

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William Morris

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

“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.”

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William Morris livre A Dream of John Ball

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

“And the Shadow of the Night and not Love was departed;
I was sore, I was weary, yet Love lived to seek;
So I scaled the dark mountains, and wandered sad-hearted
Over wearier wastes, where e'en sunlight was bleak,
With no rest of the night for my soul waxen weak.”

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William Morris

Love is Enough (1872), Song V: Through the Trouble and Tangle

“Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.”

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William Morris

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), Apology

“A world made to be lost, —
A bitter life 'twixt pain and nothing tost.”

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William Morris

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

“Wilt thou not save me? once in every year
This rightful form of mine that thou dost see
By favour of the Goddess have I here
From sunrise unto sunset given me,
That some brave man may end my misery.
And thou — art thou not brave? can thy heart fail,
Whose eyes e'en now are weeping at my tale?”

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William Morris

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

“When we can get beyond that smoky world, there, out in the country we may still see the works of our fathers yet alive amidst the very nature they were wrought into, and of which they are so completely a part: for there indeed if anywhere, in the English country, in the days when people cared about such things, was there a full sympathy between the works of man, and the land they were made for: — the land is a little land; too much shut up within the narrow seas, as it seems, to have much space for swelling into hugeness: there are no great wastes overwhelming in their dreariness, no great solitudes of forests, no terrible untrodden mountain-walls: all is measured, mingled, varied, gliding easily one thing into another: little rivers, little plains, swelling, speedily- changing uplands, all beset with handsome orderly trees; little hills, little mountains, netted over with the walls of sheep- walks: all is little; yet not foolish and blank, but serious rather, and abundant of meaning for such as choose to seek it: it is neither prison nor palace, but a decent home.”

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William Morris

The Decorative Arts (1877)

“But taking note of these things, at the last
The mariner beneath the gateway passed.
And there a lovely cloistered court he found,
A fountain in the mist o'erthrown and dry,
And in the cloister briers twining round
The slender shafts; the wondrous imagery
Outworn by more than many years gone by;
Because the country people, in their fear
Of wizardry, had wrought destruction here,
And piteously these fair things had been maimed;
There stood great Jove, lacking his head of might;
Here was the archer, swift Apollo, lamed;
The shapely limbs of Venus hid from sight
By weeds and shards; Diana's ankles light
Bound with the cable of some coasting ship;
And rusty nails through Helen's maddening lip.”

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William Morris

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

“Ah, what shall we say then, but that earth threatened often
Shall live on for ever that such things may be,
That the dry seed shall quicken, the hard earth shall soften,
And the spring-bearing birds flutter north o'er the sea,
That earth's garden may bloom round my love's feet and me?”

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William Morris

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

“…what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brainslack brain workers, nor heartsick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all—the realisation at last of the meaning of the word commonwealth.”

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William Morris

Why I Am A Socialist (1884).

“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."”

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William Morris

"Comfort".

“I too
Will go, remembering what I said to you,
When any land, the first to which we came
Seemed that we sought, and set your hearts aflame,
And all seemed won to you: but still I think,
Perchance years hence, the fount of life to drink,
Unless by some ill chance I first am slain.
But boundless risk must pay for boundless gain.”

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William Morris

"Prologue : The Wanderers"; the last line here may be related to far older expressions such as: "Naught venture, naught have" by Thomas Tusser.
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)

“Love is enough: it grew up without heeding
In the days when ye knew not its name nor its measure”

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William Morris

Love is Enough (1872), Song III: It Grew Up Without Heeding
Contexte: Love is enough: it grew up without heeding
In the days when ye knew not its name nor its measure,
And its leaflets untrodden by the light feet of pleasure
Had no boast of the blossom, no sign of the seeding,
As the morning and evening passed over its treasure.