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Simplicity Quotations




Sherwood Anderson (top)
I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them.
- Sherwood Anderson


John Burroughs (top)
To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
- John Burroughs


Frank A. Clark (top)
Maybe a person's time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.
- Frank A. Clark


Confucius (top)
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
- Confucius


Annie Dillard (top)
If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.
- Annie Dillard


Albert Einstein (top)
People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.
- Albert Einstein
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
- Albert Einstein


Arthur Helps (top)
Remember that in giving any reason at all for refusing, you lay some foundation for a future request.
- Arthur Helps


Elbert Hubbard (top)
The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination.
- Elbert Hubbard


D.H. Mondfleur (top)
Eliminate physical clutter. More importantly, eliminate spiritual clutter.
- D.H. Mondfleur


George Santayana (top)
I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
- George Santayana


Socrates (top)
How many things are there which I do not want.
- Socrates


Robert Louis Stevenson (top)
The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
- Robert Louis Stevenson


Edwin Way Teale (top)
Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.
- Edwin Way Teale


Henry David Thoreau (top)
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
- Henry David Thoreau
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.
- Henry David Thoreau


Lao Tzu (top)
Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
- Lao Tzu


Leonardo da Vinci (top)
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- Leonardo da Vinci


Charles Dudley Warner (top)
To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.
- Charles Dudley Warner


Philip Wylie (top)
Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache.
- Philip Wylie


Lin Yutang (top)
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
- Lin Yutang