Simplicity Quotes

Simple foods connect with your body's needs in complex ways.

~ Bryant Mcgill

prepare your food in keeping with monastic traditions—simple, basic, healthy, balanced.

~ Mary Deturris Poust

Simplicities are enormously complex. Consider the sentence I love you.

~ Richard O. Moore

People think the Bible is too complicated for the average person to understand. People tend to be wrong. It's too complicated for the unsaved person, yes, it's foolishness to him. But for those who are in Christ, it's a magnificent journey of simplicity. Depth, richness, but simplicity. It's the fact that the natural man can't believe that life with Christ is so simple that cause the great complexity argument. Stop, take a breath, and believe that it's as simple as it appears.

~ Alan De Jager

Simplicity is the beauty of life.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

People have seen that I intend to sweep away everything we have been taught to consider - without question - as grace and beauty; but have overlooked my work to substitute a vaster beauty, touching all objects and beings, not excluding the most despised - and because of that, all the more exhilarating.... I would like people to look at my work as an enterprise for the rehabilitation of scorned values, and, in any case, make no mistake, a work of ardent celebration.... I am convinced that any table can be for each of us a landscape as inexhaustible as the whole Andes range... I am struck by the high value, for a man, of a simple permanent fact, like the miserable vista on which the window of his room opens daily, that comes, with the passing of time, to have an important role in his life. I often think that the highest destination at which a work of art can aim is to take on that function in someone's life.

~ Jean Dubuffet

[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed from its Western counterpart: it has been dominated by a love of irregularity rather than symmetry, the impermanent rather than the eternal and the simple rather than the ornate. The reason owes nothing to climate or genetics, added Keene, but is the result of the actions of writers, painters and theorists, who had actively shaped the sense of beauty of their nation.Contrary to the Romantic belief that we each settle naturally on a fitting idea of beauty, it seems that our visual and emotional faculties in fact need constant external guidance to help them decide what they should take note of and appreciate. 'Culture' is the word we have assigned to the force that assists us in identifying which of our many sensations we should focus on and apportion value to.

~ Alain De Botton

There are many reasons to be simple. It’s simply to learn effectively, to work positively, to communicate actively and to live successfully.

~ Dee Dee Artner

[Tea-masters] have given emphasis to our natural love of simplicity, and shown us the beauty of humility. In fact, through their teachings tea has entered the life of the people.

~ Kakuzō Okakura

To be great, practice simplicity and express humility.

~ Debasish Mridha

Size and elaboration were often mistaken for importance.

~ Stephen L. Carter

Have a heart which does not trample down simplicity and humility.

~ Angelica Hopes

He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.

~ Ernest Hemingway

There is a world of difference between being clever and being right.

~ Ian Driscoll

If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful, that is, full of joy. And what about our problems? When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.

~ Richard J. Foster

By simplifying our lives, we rediscover our child-like stalk of innocents that reconnects us with the central resin of our innate humanity that knows truth and goodness. To see the world through a lens of youthful rapture is to see life for what it can be and to see for ourselves what we wish to become. In this beam of newly discovered ecstasy for life, we realize the splendor of love, life, and the unbounded beauty of the natural world.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The Master, by residing in the Tao,sets an example for all beings.Because he doesn't display himself,people can see his light.Because he has nothing to prove,people can trust his

~ Lao Tzu

The Tejo runs down from SpainAnd the Tejo goes into the sea in Portugal.Everybody knows that.But not many people know the river of my villageAnd where it comes fromAnd where it’s going.And so, because it belongs to less people,The river of my village is freer and greater.

~ Alberto Caeiro

Our main purpose of life is to be happy. Happiness is in simplicity, and the most amazing things about life is that it is so simple.

~ Debasish Mridha

Stephen Covey, in his book The 8th Habit, decribes a poll of 23,000 employees drawn from a number of companies and industries. He reports the poll's findings: * Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why * Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team's and their organization's goals * Only one in five said they had a clear line of sight between their tasks and their team's and organization's goals * Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals * Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work forThen, Covey superimposes a very human metaphor over the statistics. He says, If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.

~ Chip Heath

Make it so obvious even a computer couldn't be confused.

~ Jeff Jarvis

I find that often simple words say all that needs to be said in less time, using less energy, with all the details wanted- fully in tact. Love it.

~ Sereda Aleta Dailey

You cannot pour more water into a full cup without causing a spillage.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus.

~ Ann Voskamp

The Key to Staying Focused is to know what to Eliminate and then Doing so.

~ David C. Alves

That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. [BusinessWeek, May 25 1998]

~ Steve Jobs

In order to pick something up, you've got to put something down.

~ Todd Stocker

It is to our own detriment that we underestimate the might of small and simple things.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. (53)(Quote is actually Robert A F Thurman but Huston Smith, who only wrote the introduction to my edition, seems to be given full credit for this text.)

~ Huston Smith

The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence.

~ Swami Vivekananda

The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our chilhood behind.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraphs and kerosene and coal stoves -- they're good to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.

~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

[I am] someone who represents a very complex country which insists on being simple-minded. And simplicity, it occurs to me, it has occurred to me more than once, in my somewhat stormy life, simplicity is taken to be a great American virtue, along with sincerity. And the result of this is, if you are simple-minded enough, you can become—I didn’t want to go that far [laughs]. And as long as you’re sincere in what you say, you haven’t got to know what you’re talking about. These are the American virtues—two of them anyway. One of the results of this is that immaturity is taken to be a virtue too.

~ James Baldwin

Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.

~ Edward Teller

Simplicity is the key to happiness.

~ Dee Dee Artner

SIMPLICITY is practicing a lifestyle that is increasingly free of excess, greed, covetousness, and other forms of dependence on the things of this world. The Holy Spirit works through simplicity to release spiritual gifts such as hospitality, mercy, and giving... to live free of anxiety, and to better take care of this Earth.

~ Siang-Yang Tan

1.17 THE WORLDLY WAYSThe world, the din, the time, the kin,In our days are a sin,Love’s condemned and not true,A farce for sex, a laugh at You.[179] - 1Simplicity is a crime,Frauds and liars are divine,Sex is worshiped, live not true,Cheat be cheated our mottos new.[180] - 1Love is lost - so dear to You,And lovers are but a few,‘Cause they know that live if hell,As customs are but their cell.[181] - 1The lies, the crime, the evil ways,Are the paths of our days,We love our neighbour as love’s not true,And hate the others cause they do too.[182] - 1

~ Munindra Misra

Happiness lies in simplicityComplexity brings anxiety.

~ Debasish Mridha

that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.

~ Henry David Thoreau

To the Technocrats: Have mercy on us. Relax a bit, take time out for simple pleasures. For example, the luxuries of electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, instant electronic communication and such, have taught me to relearn and enjoy the basic human satisfactions of dipping water from a cold clear mountain stream; of building a wood fire in a cast-iron stove; of using long winter nights for making music, making things, making love; of writing long letters, in longhand with a fountain pen, to the few people on this earth I truly care about.

~ Edward Abbey