It is right and necessary that all 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.
William MorrisRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creating something meaningful involves the entire being of a person, utilizing both mental and physical energies.
William Morris emphasizes the holistic nature of creativity, where a person engages not only their physical abilities but also their mental faculties—memory and imagination. This quote highlights the intrinsic connection between the act of creation and the deeper emotional and intellectual engagement of the creator, underscoring that true work is an expression of one’s will and essence.
Themes
CreativityWorkMindSoulEnergy
In practice
Example use cases
During an art workshop, one might reference this quote to inspire participants to fully immerse themselves in their creative process.
More from William Morris
All quotes →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 MorrisRead
How often it consoles me to think of barbarism once more flooding the world, and real feelings and passions, however rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies.
William MorrisRead
With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.
William MorrisRead
A good way to rid one's self of a sense of discomfort is to do something. That uneasy, dissatisfied feeling is actual force vibrating out of order; it may be turned to practical account by giving proper expression to its creative character.
William MorrisRead
Similar quotes
Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
Dorothy AllisonRead
If you want to write you should learn the alphabet. You write and write and in the end you hava a beautiful, perfect alphabet. But it isn’t the alphabed that is important. The important thing is what you are writing, what you are expressing. The same thing goes for photography. Photographs can be technically perfect and even beautiful, but they have no expression.
Andre KerteszRead
To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision.
Jane CampionRead
We are not peddlers of the fashionable. We believe that good design defies fashion, is truly innovative, eminently sensible, yet a source of inspiration to those who have the pleasure of living with it.
Arthur EricksonRead
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced that there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes but by no means always find the way to do it.
John SteinbeckRead
You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead