William Morris

e know from many things he said that the spectacle of our industrial society made him feel that there was something sinister in the order of the universe. The blind desire for life, which drives men to forego all that makes life worth living, seemed to him an evil thing which the men of the sagas had put away from them with all its attendant ignominy and fear.

f you want dirt,” he said, “you can find that in the street.”

but look, suppose people lived in little communities among gardens and green fields, so that they could be in the country in five minutes’ walk, and had few wants, almost no furniture, for instance, and no servants, and studied the (difficult) arts of enjoying life, and finding out what they really wanted; then I think we might hope civilisation had really begun.”

Keats told Shelley that the artist must serve both God and Mammon, and Samuel Butler remarked that it is not easy to do that but that nothing worth doing ever is easy.