Simplicity Quotes

As we live and as we are, Simplicity -- with a capital "S" -- is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.

- Frank Lloyd Wright

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

- Charles Mingus

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I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.

- Lin Yutang

We can travel a long way and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. it is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves to be always at home.

- Sharon Salzberg

Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.

- Noam Chomsky

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?

- Albert Einstein

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.

- Henry David Thoreau

The highest excellence is like water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving, the low place which all men dislike.

- Laozi (Lao Tzu, Lao Tse, Lao Tsu)

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

- Albert Einstein

But I deal with this meditating and by understanding I've been put on the planet to serve humanity. I have to remind myself to live simply and not to overindulge, which is a constant battle in a material world.

- Sandra Cisneros

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.

- Thor Heyerdahl

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

- Laozi (Lao Tzu, Lao Tse, Lao Tsu)

The Hopi Indians of Arizona believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning on its axis. For me, feeding the seagulls is one of those everyday prayers.

- Brenda Peterson

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

- Hans Hofmann

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A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labor of other [people], living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labor of my fellow [people]. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.

- Albert Einstein

I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying.

- George Bird Evans

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Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

- Kalidasa

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony. [William Henry Channing's Symphony: some background, and its appearance in an Arthur Brisbane editorial - from the 1906 collection, "Editorials From The Hearst Newspapers"]

- William Henry Channing

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Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.

- Albert Einstein

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

- Henry David Thoreau