I Wish I’d Said That.

Dr. Boli’s Occasional Journal of Quotations.

Only One Thing Can Save Us.

Window at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith, by photographer David Hawgood, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Look you, as I sit at my work at home, which is at Hammersmith, close to the river, I often hear go past the window some of that ruffianism of which a good deal has been said in the papers of late, and has been said before at recurring periods. As I hear the yells and shrieks & all the degradation cast on the glorious tongue of Shakespeare & Milton, as I see the brutal reckless faces & figures go past me, it rouses the recklessness & brutality in me also, & fierce wrath takes possession of me, till I remember, as I hope I mostly do, that it was my good luck only of being born respectable and rich that has put me on this side of the window among delightful books and lovely works of art, & not on the other side, in the empty street, the drink-steeped liquor-shops, the foul and degraded lodgings. What words can say what all that means? Do not think, I beg of you, that I am speaking rhetorically in saying that when I think of all this, I feel that the one great thing I desire is that this great country should shake off from her all foreign and colonial entanglements, & turn that mighty force of her respectable people, the greatest power the world has ever seen, to giving the children of these poor folk the pleasures & the hopes of men. Is that really impossible? is there no hope of it? If so, I can only say that civilization is a delusion and a lie; there is no such thing and no hope of such a thing.

But since I wish to live, & even to be happy, I cannot believe it impossible. I know by my own feelings & desires what these men want, what would have saved them from this lowest depth of savagery: employment which would foster their self-respect and win the praise and sympathy of their fellows, and dwellings which they could come to with pleasure, surroundings which would soothe and elevate them; reasonable labour, reasonable rest. There is only one thing that can give them this, and that is art.

——William Morris, Art and the Beauty of the Earth.