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Quotes About Simplicity

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
~ John Cage
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accordance with nature, in her manner of operation.
~ John Cage
Wherefore we hold that we ought to introduce only those things which we have described above, and which are adapted to the humble character of our profession and the nature of the climate, that the chief thing about our dress maybe not the novelty of the garb, which might give some offence to men of the world, but its honourable simplicity.
~ John Cassian
simply do whatever comes naturally.
~ John Chryssavgis
To read a poem with no thought in mind but to paraphrase it into a single, simple and usually high-minded prose statement is the destruction of poetry.
~ John Ciardi
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie—The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
~ John Clare
There is nothing but poetry about the existence of childhood real simple soul-moving poetry the laughter and joy of poetry and not its philosophy and there is nothing of poetry about manhood but the reflection and the remembrance of what has been—nothing more
~ John Clare
Yet simple souls, their faith it knows no stint: Things least to be believed are most preferred. All counterfeits, as from truth's sacred mint, Are readily believed if once put down in print
~ John Clare
O take me from the busy crowd, I cannot bear the noise! For Nature's voice is never loud; I seek for quiet joys. The book I love is everywhere, And not in idle words; The book I love is known to all, And better lore affords.
~ John Clare
borderline simpleton.
~ John Connolly
The trees were almost bare, making their branches appear as cracks in the cosmos.
~ John Connolly
And I knew, too, that to live a life like Walter Cole's—a life almost mundane in the pleasure it derived from small happinesses and the beauty of the familiar, but uncommon in the value it attached to them—was something to be envied.
~ John Connolly
Life was simpler, too, if one did not think too hard. -The Burning Soul
~ John Connolly
we have a right to narrow down our universe ever further and further; until like the world of the Iliad and the Odyssey it is made up of certain simple endurances, enjoyments, mental and physical struggles, surrounded by the washing of the sea, the blowing of the wind, the swaying of the wheat, the falling of the rain, the voyaging of the clouds, and the motions of the sun and moon and dawn and twilight.
~ John Cowper Powys
This is the whole secret of the practice of Elementalism: it obtains happiness by the most rigid and austere simplification of the means to happiness.
~ John Cowper Powys
One of the virtues of drink was how it reduced life to these simple matters, which engaged all the attention; seeing, walking, raising a bottle accurately to the hole in your face. As though you were two years old again. No thoughts but simple ones. And
~ John Crowley
belief in the ultimate simplicity and unity behind the rules that constrain the Universe leads us to expect that there exists a single unchanging pattern behind the appearances. Under different conditions this single pattern will crystallise into superficially distinct patterns that show up as the four separate forces governing the world around us. It has gradually become clear how this patterning probably works.
~ John D. Barrow
There is no formula that can deliver all truth, all harmony, all simplicity. No Theory of Everything can ever provide total insight. For, to see through everything, would leave us seeing nothing at all.
~ John D. Barrow
Our brains are the most complicated objects that we have so far encountered in the Universe. We are far from simple. Indeed, were our brains significantly simpler, we would be too simple to know it.
~ John D. Barrow
by means of evolution by natural selection, which showed how living things can become well adapted to their environments over the course of time under a very wide range of circumstances, so long as the environment is not changing too quickly. Complexity could develop from simplicity without direct Divine intervention.
~ John D. Barrow
Nutshells close and encapsulate, shelter and protect, reduce and simplify, while everything in deconstruction is turned toward opening, exposure, expansion, and complexification, toward releasing unheard of, undreamt of possibilities to come , toward cracking nutshells wherever they appear.
~ John D. Caputo
It is that flavor exuded by women who have fashioned an earthy and simplified sexual adjustment to their environment, borne their young, achieved an unthinking physical confidence. They are often placidly unkempt, even grubby, taking no interest in the niceties of posture. They have a slow relish for the physical spectrum of food, sun, deep sleep, the needs of children, the caressess of affection. There is a tiny magnificance about them, like the sultry dignity of she-lions.
~ John D. MacDonald
From the very beginning of the movement in the sixteenth century, Anabaptists shared a deep suspicion of the so-called Schriftgelehrten - the university-trained scholars who, they claimed artfully dodged the clear and simple teachings of Jesus by appealing to complex arguments and carefully crafted statements of doctrine. In other words, they confused theological discussions with lived faith.
~ John D. Roth
Like having no need of big things. Enjoy that you are okay in being simple.
~ John de Ruiter