Best 1007 quotes in «simplicity quotes» category

Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane--in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath--she had probably put herself in unnecessary danger.

Until I was left with nothing but life and books, I realised these two gracious gifts, where enough for me to exist.

Useless and precious objects. Taking up space. Taking up time.

Value People not their Money! Know Worth of Yourself & Others... In terms of Morals, Manners, Simplicity & Intelligence!

Vices are simply overworked virtues, anyway. Economy and frugality are to be commended but follow them on in an increasing ratio and what do we find at the other end? A miser! If we overdo the using of spare moments we may find an invalid at the end, while perhaps if we allowed ourselves more idle time we would conserve our nervous strength and health to more than the value the work we could accomplish by emulating at all times the little busy bee. I once knew a woman, not very strong, who to the wonder of her friends went through a time of extraordinary hard work without any ill effects. I asked her for her secret and she told me that she was able to keep her health, under the strain, because she took 20 minutes, of each day in which to absolutely relax both mind and body. She did not even “set and think.” She lay at full length, every muscle and nerve relaxed and her mind as quiet as her body. This always relieved the strain and renewed her strength.

Water’s water and that’s why it’s beautiful.

We aim at simplicity and hope for truth.

We are not what we own; we are what we do, what we think and who we love.

We arrive in the rooms tangled up in a web of complexity and confusion. Our lives are unmanageable because our minds are unmanageable.” – p. 134

We came into existence with nothing. And, when our spirit departs, we will take nothing out of world.

We cannot see how divine the hills and the mountains are, so we want an angel with wings on top of them.

We had two categories. We had that good shit ... and we had that other shit.

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

We need to simplify life. Do you think grass thinks about who trod on it yesterday? No... It just continues to grow. And so should you. You cannot control who treads on you, but you do control your own growth. Don't ever let others inhibit you!

We read a good novel not in order to know more people, but in order to know fewer. Instead of the humming swarm of human beings, relatives, customers, servants, postmen, afternoon callers, tradesmen, strangers who tell us the time, strangers who remark on the weather, beggars, waiters, and telegraph-boys--instead of this bewildering human swarm which passes us every day, fiction asks us to follow one figure (say the postman) consistently through his ecstasies and agonies. That is what makes one impatient with that type of pessimistic rebel who is always complaining of the narrowness of his life and demanding a larger sphere. Life is too large for us as it is: we have all too many things to attend to. All true romance is an attempt to simplify it, to cut it down to plainer and more pictorial proportions. What dullness there is in our life arises mostly from its rapidity; people pass us too quickly to show us their interesting side. By the end of the week we have talked to a hundred bores; whereas, if we had stuck to one of them, we might have found ourselves talking to a new friend, or a humorist, or a murderer, or a man who had seen a ghost.

What do you most get out of the artwork that you love the most? And answering my own question, I would hesitate to say that it is communing with someone else’s pain and frailty; it is the empathetic tear of another voice that is like yours but with more experience; it is your own adoration of a complex idea simply and acutely expressed. But chiefly it is that the work is located in the real.

We ought to compliment and not to compete with one another.

We're very familiar with the idea that some things are so complex they're beyond our comprehension. This not only keeps us solving and experimenting but also distracted. Many things are really so simple we can't see them under our big noses.

What does this think about that? Nothing thinks about anything. Does the earth have consciousness of its stones and plants? If it did, it would be people. . . Why am I worrying about this? If I think about these things, I’ll stop seeing trees and plants And stop seeing the Earth For only seeing my thoughts... I’ll get unhappy and stay in the dark. And so, without thinking, I have the Earth and the Sky.

What have I to prove, and to whom, and why? I'm keen enough to want nothing more than to live a simple, humble, unfettered life.

What can I tell you? Welcome to the human race. You people like to pretend things are simple, even at your own cost.

What's simple is that everything good comes from God, and everything bad comes from man. Where it gets complicated is that everything seemingly good but ultimately bad comes from man, and everything seemingly bad but ultimately good comes from God.

What matters most is what lasts longest, and our families are for eternity.

What’s the most difficult thing you can do? Live simply. ‘Cause in order to be self-sufficient, you got to get well near everybody else to work for you.

When we focus on people and life instead of material possessions and mere wants, there's not much room for emotional hand-wringing. Instead, there's more space to weigh what we value in our lives and to acknowledge what really counts. Chapter 9 Simplicity Laura Ingalls in The Long Winter

When my late father died — now I'm in mourning for my late mother — that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that I thought were important, externals, etc., all of that is irrelevant. You lose a parent, you suddenly realize what a slender thing life is, how easily you can lose those you love. Then out of that comes a new simplicity and that is why sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times, "I will not let you go until you bless me.

When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman. He had no thought of being an artist at all. he sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lampost, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: "it is so beautiful I must show you how it looks." And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it. When I read this letter of Van Gogh's it comforted me very much and seemed to throw a clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about *design* and *balance* and getting *interesting planes* into your painting, and avoided, with the most astringent severity, showing the faintest *acedemical* tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and so on. But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it. And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care.

When a small, unassuming object exceeds our expectations, we are not only surprised but pleased. Our usual reaction is something like, "That little thing did all that?" Simplicity is about the unexpected pleasure derived from what is likely to be insignificant and would otherwise go unnoticed. The smaller the object, the more forgiving we can be when it misbehaves.

When happiness is your only thought it's easy to be happy.

When we are able to do something so easily, we regard such thing as simple; but simplicity is complexity. Withing the things which are simple lay the things which are complex and within the things which are complex, lay the things which are simple

When we are able to do something so easily, we regard such thing as simplicity; but simplicity is complexity. Withing the things which are simple lay the things which are complex and within the things which are complex, lay the things which are simple

When we have simplicity we have so much more freedom in every single aspect of our lives. Maybe it's a classic case of less is more? Less stress, less worries, more time, more happiness.

When you give your items away, don’t keep the excess of your pride.

Where is it written that one should only care about big things?

When you're dead, you're dead, and that's that.

Why Worry? If its better when simpler.

Why use long words when short ones will do? Not all readers have been to college or university.

You don't need more space. You need less stuff.

Wise men count backward toward zero. They know that's where contentment lies.

You can never stay angry too long in the bush though. At least, that's what I think. It's not that it's soothing or restful, because it's not. What it does for me is get inside my body, inside my blood, and take me over. I don't know that I can describe it any better than that. It takes me over and I become part of it and it becomes part of me and I'm not very important, or at least no more important than a tree or a rock or a spider abseiling down a long thread of cobweb. As I wandered around, on that hot afternoon, I didn't notice anything too amazing or beautiful or mindbogglingly spectacular. I can't actually remember noticing anything out of the ordinary: just the grey-green rocks and the olive-green leaves and the reddish soil with its teeming ants. The tattered ribbons of paperbark, the crackly dry cicada shell, the smooth furrow left in the dust by a passing snake. That's all there ever is really, most of the time. No rainforest with tropical butterflies, no palm trees or Californian redwoods, no leopards or iguanas or panda bears. Just the bush.

You can't build the road without walking it.

You don't get any points in life for doing things the hard way.

You have enough to share with the world; the gift of love, kindness, goodness, smiles, hugs, prayer, inspiration, fellowship, volunteerism and many more.

Without a little chaos life will be dull, unbeautiful, for we have been trained not to align with simplicity for too long.

Wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ and to know that I love Him--this is all!

You can live without many wants.

You can have a less chaotic, simpler life working with what you already have and transforming it into what you really need.

You can turn every ugly and damaging drama into a genuine blessing by seeing it differently. No one is suffering on purpose. We learn to give up the pleasure we feel in self-righteously blaming others. Healing happens when we see things differently. The question is: do you want suffering or peace? It's that simple.

You don’t need much to give. Give what you have.

You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts.