Named source · 1890

News from Nowhere; Or, An Epoch of Rest Quotes by William Morris: Context & Meanings

3 quotations linked to News from Nowhere; Or, An Epoch of Rest by or associated with William Morris, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

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1890 utopian romance / political fiction

Topics and ideas

Pleasurable work, art, education, freedom, social need, craftsmanship, gradual change and imagined forms of everyday life.

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3 quotations with source context and meaning

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“Thus at last and by slow degrees we got pleasure into our work; then we became conscious of that pleasure, and cultivated it”

William Morris

Voice: Fictional character · Old Hammond

Meaning & context

The fictional speaker describes improvement as gradual: better workmanship leads to recognized pleasure, which is then deliberately cultivated rather than appearing instantly or automatically.

Source details

News from Nowhere, Old Hammond’s historical explanation of the utopian society; Project Gutenberg #3261. This is fictional dialogue, not a direct autobiographical maxim by Morris.

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“men who had at last learned to accept life itself as a pleasure, and the satisfaction of the common needs of mankind and the preparation for them, as work fit for the best of the race.”

William Morris

Voice: Fictional narrator · William Guest

Meaning & context

The narrator describes a society in which ordinary shared needs are treated as worthy work and life itself is approached as something to participate in rather than merely endure.

Source details

News from Nowhere, narrator William Guest observing Morsom’s community; Project Gutenberg #3261. This is narrative description inside a utopian novel.

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“the freedom for every man to do what he can do best, joined to the knowledge of what productions of labour we really wanted. I must admit that this knowledge we reached slowly and painfully.”

William Morris

Voice: Fictional character · Old Hammond

Meaning & context

Old Hammond connects useful work with discovering strengths and social needs, while explicitly describing that knowledge as something learned gradually through difficulty.

Source details

News from Nowhere, Chapter XV, ‘On the Lack of Incentive to Labour in a Communist Society,’ Project Gutenberg #3261. Old Hammond says the society gained happiness through the absence of artificial coercion, ‘the freedom for every man to do what he can do best,’ and slowly learned knowledge of what labour was wanted. It is fictional utopian dialogue and historical-social argument, not Morris autobiography or settled economic science.

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1890 utopian romance / political fiction

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3 quotations with source context and meaning

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