seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from Australia
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from Congo - Brazzaville
seen from United States
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from United States
seen from Spain
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
Is money to be gathered? cut down the pleasant trees among the houses, pull down ancient and venerable buildings for the money that a few square yards of London dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hide the sun and poison the air with smoke and worse, and it’s nobody’s business to see to it or mend it: that is all that modern commerce, the counting-house forgetful of the workshop, will do for us herein.
Morris, 1919, l. 368, grifo nosso.
William Morris, planetologista.
[When the Decorative Arts are parted from those greater (so called)], it is ill for the Arts altogether: the lesser ones become trivial, mechanical, unintelligent, incapable of resisting the changes pressed upon them by fashion or dishonesty; while the greater, however they may be practised for a while by men of great minds and wonder-working hands, unhelped by the lesser, unhelped by each other, are sure to lose their dignity of popular arts, and become nothing but dull adjuncts to unmeaning pomp, or ingenious toys for a few rich and idle men.
Morris, 1919, l. 56.
I must ask you therefore from the outset to believe that whatever I may blame or whatever I may praise, I neither, when I think of what history has been, am inclined to lament the past, to despise the present, or despair of the future [...]
Morris, 1919, l. 48, grifo nosso.
[Even when we are so used to it that we scarcely notice it] there is the decoration, or some pretence of it, and it has, or ought to have, a use and a meaning. For, and this is at the root of the whole matter, everything made by man’s hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent [...]
Morris, 1919, l. 67.
To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it.
Morris, 1919, l. 75, grifo nosso.
[N]o, 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.
Morris, 1919, l. 86, grifo nosso.
Sick burn.
[You must not] forget that when men say popes, kings, and emperors built such and such buildings, it is a mere way of speaking. [...] Did they? or, rather, men like you and me, handicraftsmen, who have left no names behind them, nothing but their work?
Morris, 1919, l. 100.
[T]here are peoples not a few, of whom we know scarce anything, save that they thought such and such forms beautiful.
Morris, 1919, l. 104.
