Quotes About Simplicity

Now Hillary Clinton and I are 'companeros de alma.' And we share this basic belief: it's simple. Do all the good you can and serve one another. Pretty simple.

When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after all!

You should own stuff, but make sure they are indispensable stuff. A family of three can simplify to the point of owning just three beds, two couches, three dressers, one table, few chairs, one desk, eight plates, eight glasses, eight bowls and some toys and books for the kids.

Simplifying your meals means shunning all unhealthy choices like French fries, fatty foods, sugary foods, salty foods, etc. Simplifying your eating habits will save you from lots of troubles in the long run.

I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

Then first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, I am what I am, nothing more.

Give me a chair and a table, fire enough to keep me from shivering, the few books I like best and writing materials, and I am absolutely content.

He that sees the essential in this child, the pure childhood, sees that which is the essence of me," grace and truth-in a word, childlikeness. It follows not that the former is perfect as the latter, but it is the same in kind, and therefore, manifest in the child, reveals that which is in Jesus.

With him all is simplicity of purpose and meaning and effort and end-namely, that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness. It is so plain that any one may see it, every one ought to see it, every one shall see it. It must be so. He is utterly true and good to us, nor shall anything withstand his will.

Could we see things always as we have sometimes seen them—and as one day we must always see them, only far better—should we ever know dullness? Greatly as we might enjoy all forms of art, much as we might learn through the eyes and thoughts of other men, should we fly to these for deliverance from ennui , from any haunting discomfort? Should we not just open our own child-eyes, look upon the things themselves, and be consoled?

Here I was alone, and could take my own time. In other parts of the world one always seems to be in a great hurry, tearing from one spot to the other at a gallop, but out yonder, perhaps because distances are so great, time don't seem to matter; you can jog along, breathing fresh air and enjoying the scenery and your own thoughts about women and home and hunting and booze and money and what may lie over the next hill.

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do. (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

The point is that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing.

The truest happiness, he said, lay in working hard and living frugally.

Hitherto, the rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple.

If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia?… I think that by retaining one's childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and…toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If I were forced to compare Tolstoy with Dickens , I should say that Tolstoy's appeal will probably be wider in the long run, because Dickens is scarcely intelligible outside the English-speaking culture; on the other hand, Dickens is able to reach simple people, which Tolstoy is not. Tolstoy's characters can cross a frontier, Dickens's can be portrayed on a cigarette-card. But one is no more obliged to choose between them than between a sausage and a rose.

was a life that wore you out, used up every ounce of your energy, and kept you profoundly, unquestionably happy. In the literal sense of the word, it stupefied you. The long days in the fields, the coarse food and insufficient sleep, the smell of hops and wood smoke, lulled you into an almost beastlike heaviness. Your wits seemed to thicken, just as your skin did, in the rain and sunshine and perpetual fresh air.

Dirt is a thing people make too much fuss about.

The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier – even quicker, once you have the habit – to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think.