Quotes About Clarity

If we would aim at perfection in any thing, simplicity must not be overlooked.

When the far mountains are invisible, the near ones look the higher.

Les détails nous empoisonnent la vie. Simplifiez, simplifiez.

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life! To put to rest all that was not life... And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...

How watchful we must be to keep the crystal well that we were made, clear!—that it be not made turbid by our contact with the world, so that it will not reflect objects. What other liberty is there worth having, if we have not freedom and peace in our minds,—if our inmost and most private man is but a sour and turbid pool? Often we are so jarred by chagrins in dealing with the world, that we cannot reflect.

We shall see but little if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air,—the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountain-top through some new vista,—this is wealth enough for one afternoon.

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day;…so simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real.

Nov. 2, 1837. Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

Prchavá pravda naÅ¡ich slov by mala neustále prezradzovaÃ…Â¥ nedostato?nosÃ…Â¥ toho, ?o eÅ¡te obsahoval náÅ¡ príhovor.

If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairty tale from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly.

Still we live meanly, like ants... Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. 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 would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness.

instant. Confucius said, To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

Blue is light seen through a veil.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head.

It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.

I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I

The most distinct and beautiful statement of any form must take at last the mathematical form.We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would express them both

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

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately... I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life! To put to rout all that was not life... and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.