Quotes About Simplicity

This is the "secret" of those people who "do so many things" and apparently so many difficult things. They do only one at a time. As a result, they need much less time in the end than the rest of us.

Como si se tratara de un folleto turístico: un único objetivo se presenta como aventura. Para el folleto, la aventura será un fuego de campamento -para mí lo será el agua que corre al borde de la acera, la superficie suave y lisa de la crema de zapatos en una lata nueva, la cama recién cambiada, una persona anciana aún curiosa.

Tengo ganas de andar, simplemente andar. No puedo hacer ya otra cosa.

The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life?until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty.

Prayer is easier than we think. we want to think it is too hard or too high and holy for us, because that gives us an excuse for not doing it. This is false humility. We can all do it, even the most sinful, shallow, silly, and stupid of us.

St. Thomas is as practical and plain and reasonable in ethics as Aristotle, or Confucius, or your uncle.

De Caussade makes this matter of duty very simple, too, as he makes everything simple: "We have two duties to fulfill: we must actively seek to carry God's will into effect and passively accept all that his will sends us" (p. 73). That's all. That's it.

Modernism and Fundamentalism are popular—they are two quick and easy answers to a complex question.

Happiness can get boring, because it is the satisfaction of our desires, and we know what we desire. (Can you desire what you do not know?) Joy never gets boring because it transcends our desires and surprises them with gifts.

It didn't seem possible to gain so much happiness from so little.

In his first summers, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for nearly an hour in his sandbox in the orchard, as doves and redwings came and went on the warm wind, the leaves dancing, the clouds flying…the child was not observing; he was at rest in the very center of the universe, a part of things, unaware of endings and beginning, still in unison with the primordial nature of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour through.

To practice Zen means to realize one's existence in the beauty and clarity of this present moment, rather than letting life unravel in useless daydreaming of the past and future. To 'rest in the present' is a state of magical simplicity.

To practice Zen means to realize one's existence in the beauty and clarity of this present moment, rather than letting life unravel in useless daydreaming of the past and future. To rest in the present is a state of magical simplicity.

The wants of the primitive are few, since he does not envy what he knows nothing of.

although I seldom knew what the date was. It didn't seem important. I was turning into a contented vegetable, maintaining sporadic contact with real life through telephone conversations with people in faraway offices.

Elegance and simplicity . . . plastic, including polyester resin, which has several attractions: permanence (indoors), an aura of difficulty and technical expertise, and preciousness . . . rivaling bronze or marble. . . . in short, the aroma of Los Angeles in the sixties — newness, postcard sunset color, and intimations oif aerospace profundity.

but the easiest way isn't necessarily the true one.

If you are paying for something to drink when safe drinking water comes out of the tap, you have money to spend on things you don't really need.

The world would be a much simpler place if one could bring about social change merely by making a logically consistent moral argument.

There is a view in some philosophical circles that anything that can be understood by people who have not studied philosophy is not profound enough to be worth saying. To the contrary, I suspect that whatever cannot be said clearly is probably not being thought clearly either.

A long time ago, when we all lived in the forest and none of us lived anywhere else

There is a heuristic "rule of thumb" in modeling dynamical systems: do not attempt to encompass in your model more than two hierarchical levels.

The most effective nos are the least complicated. The more details you supply, the more likely the other person will challenge you or try to change your mind.

Your first step in decluttering them is to ask yourself "How do I want these horizontal surfaces to make my life easier?" (Rather than "What do I want to put here?")