Quotes About Simplicity

Gently boiling potatoes make a sound not unlike a small stream moving quickly over rocks. I thought it would be perfect for one of those ambient-noise tapes: The Ocean; Wind in the Pine Trees; Boiling Potatoes. It was very soothing. I measured baking powder to its dulcet tones.

As I sat down, though, I realized that you can get used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things--though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart--and at the ranch, I could see, we have pretty much everything we'd need but precious little else.

I'd rather have a yard filled with genuine garbage than with trashy lawn ornaments.

I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things—though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart—and at the ranch, I could see, we'd have pretty much everything we'd need but precious little else.

A little while after we'd moved into the depot, we heard Mom and Dad talking about buying us kids real beds, and we said they shouldn't do it. We liked our boxes. They made going to bed seem like an adventure.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. —Oscar Wilde

sat down, though, I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all.

The Nausea has stayed down there, in the yellow light. I am happy: this cold is so pure, this night so pure: am I myself not a wave of icy air? With neither blood, nor lymph, nor flesh. Flowing down this long canal towards the pallor down there. To be nothing but coldness.

Oh, what a nuisance you are! I'm giving you my mouth, my arms, my whole body - and everything could be so simple...My trust! I haven't any to give, I'm afraid, and you're making me terribly embarrassed. You must have something pretty ghastly on your conscience to make such a fuss about my trusting you.

Amuse yourself, torment your desires. Drink when you're thirsty -- that would be very much too simple! If you didn't harbour a temptation eternally in your soul, you'd run the risk of forgetting yourself.

For the moment they wanted to live with the least expenditure, economize words, gestures, thoughts, float: they had only one day in which to smooth out their wrinkles, their crow's feet, the bitter lines made by a hard week's work. One day only.

Everywhere, now, there are objects like this glass of beer on the table there. When I see it, I feel like saying: "Enough." I realize quite well that I have

If I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an' work, an' no trouble.

A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away.

The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.

Act without striving. Work without interfering. Find the flavour in what is flavourless.

Practice non-action. Work without doing.

If you want to accord with the Tao, just do your job, then let go.

Honest work is much better than a mansion.

I have come finally to a simple philosophy of work. I enjoy what I do and do the best I can. That is enough.

My work is really simple, actually. I'm just playing with forms of changing.

The 80/20 Principle, like the truth, can make you free. You can work less. At the same time, you can earn more and enjoy more. The only price is that you need to do some serious 80/20 thinking.

I was much happier when I had less responsibility... when my only responsibility was to my work and to myself.

Life was very simple. My parents had come from the North of England, which is a fairly rugged, bleak, hard-working part of England, and so there was not the expectation of luxury.