William Morris

“To do nothing but grumble and not to act - that is throwing away one's life.”

“I am going, if I can, to be an architect, and I am too old already, and there is no time to lose.”

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

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

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

“I can't enter into politico-social subjects with any interest, for on the whole, I see that things are in a muddle, and I have no power or vocation to set them right in ever so little a degree.”

“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.”