Quotes About Simplicity

beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Henry David Thoreau

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

Lidé dospÄ›li tak daleko, že ?asto strádají ne z nedostatku vÄ›cí potÃ…â"¢ebných, nýbrž z nedostatku vÄ›cí nadbyte?ných.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind.

Fui a los bosques porque quería vivir deliberadamente, enfrentar solo los hechos esenciales de la vida, y ver si no podía aprender lo que ella tenia que enseñar, no sea que cuando estuviera por morir descubriera que no había vivido».

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.... To be a philosopher is not mere to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail

I went to the woods because I wished to live delibertely, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not

When he has obtained those things which are necessary in life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now.

Most men never appear to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.

Love is the fulfilling of the law. Did you ever think what he meant by that? In those days men were working the passage to Heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they had manufactured out of them. Christ came and said, I will show you a more simple way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten things, without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will unconsciously fulfill the whole law.

his indescribable little air of knowing nothing in the world but love.

I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favour of doing it.

Her face was not young, but it was simple; it was not fresh, but it was mild. She had large eyes which were not bright, and a great deal of hair which was not 'dressed,' and long fine hands which were--possibly--not clean.

furnished, but by no means decorated

It seemed to him that he both knew too much to imagine [the child's] simplicity and too little to disembroil his tangle.

Is to bring about for them such a complexity of relations—unless indeed we call it a simplicity!—that the situation has to wind itself up. They want to go back.

There isn't a thing I can imagine having missed that I don't quite ache to miss again; and it remains at all events an odd stroke that, having of old most felt the thrill of the place in its mighty muchness, I have lived to adore it backward for its sweet simplicity.

Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.

Mama doesn't care for me, she said very simply. Not really. Child as she was, her little long history was in the words.

Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go. We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box.