Simplicity Quotes - Page 3

I wanted you see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.

Silence frees us from the need to control others. One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. A frantic stream of words flows from us in an attempt to straighten others out. We want so desperately for them to agree with us, to see things our way. We evaluate people, judge people, condemn people. We devour people with our words. Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on that. When we become quiet enough to let go of people, we learn compassion for them.

It is so dam difficult to be simple.

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

If we live we live if we die we die if we suffer we suffer if we are terrified we are terrified. There is no problem about it.

The rules of soccer are very simple. Basically it's this: If it moves kick it if it doesn't move kick it until it does.

The art of art is simplicity.

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like'. Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over. We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity.

The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to 'one-upping' his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, becomes a staple, there is no wisdom in it.

To the Technocrats: Have mercy on us. Relax a bit, take time out for simple pleasures. For example, the luxuries of electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, instant electronic communication and such, have taught me to relearn and enjoy the basic human satisfactions of dipping water from a cold clear mountain stream; of building a wood fire in a cast-iron stove; of using long winter nights for making music, making things, making love; of writing long letters, in longhand with a fountain pen, to the few people on this earth I truly care about.

Praise be to God I’m not good,And have the natural egotism of flowersAnd rivers following their bedPreoccupied without knowing itOnly with blooming and flowing.This is the only mission in the World,This—to exist clearly,And to know how to do it without thinking about it.)

Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.

1.17 THE WORLDLY WAYSThe world, the din, the time, the kin,In our days are a sin,Love’s condemned and not true,A farce for sex, a laugh at You.[179]t - 1Simplicity is a crime,Frauds and liars are divine,Sex is worshiped, live not true,Cheat be cheated our mottos new.[180]t - 1Love is lost - so dear to You,And lovers are but a few,‘Cause they know that live if hell,As customs are but their cell.[181]t- 1The lies, the crime, the evil ways,Are the paths of our days,We love our neighbour as love’s not true,And hate the others cause they do too.[182]t- 1

You cannot pour more water into a full cup without causing a spillage.

That's the way progress works: the more we build up these vast repertoires of scientific and technological understanding, the more we conceal them.

Simplicity gives you the power of freedom.Kindness gives you the power of boldness.Humility gives you the power of acceptance.

Irony of the world is that it wants to simplify the complexity and complicate the simplicity.

Travellers scowl at us, and countrymen give us scornful names. 'Strider' I am to one fat man who lives within a day's march of foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly. Yet we would not have it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so.

You see what I am driving at. The mentally handicapped do not have a consciousness of power. Because of this perhaps their capacity for love is more immediate, lively and developed than that of other men. They cannot be men of ambition and action in society and so develop a capacity for friendship rather than for efficiency. They are indeed weak and easily influenced, because they confidently give themselves to others; they are simple certainly, but often with a very attractive simplicity. Their first reaction is often one of welcome and not of rejection or criticism. Full of trust, they commit themselves deeply. Who amongst us has not been moved when met by the warm welcome of our boys and girls, by their smiles, their confidence and their outstretched arms. Free from the bonds of conventional society, and of ambition, they are free, not with the ambitious freedom of reason, but with an interior freedom, that of friendship. Who has not been struck by the rightness of their judgments upon the goodness or evil of men, by their profound intuition on certain human truths, by the truth and simplicity of their nature which seeks not so much to appear to be, as to be. Living in a society where simplicity has been submerged by criticism and sometimes by hypocrisy, is it not comforting to find people who can be aware, who can marvel? Their open natures are made for communion and love.

I am not a genius, I am just curious. I ask many questions. and when the answer is simple, then God is answering.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.

I never said it was easy to find your place in this world, but I’m coming to the conclusion that if you seek to please others, you will forever be changing because you will never be yourself, only fragments of someone you could be. You need to belong to yourself, and let others belong to themselves too. You need to be free and detached from things and your surroundings. You need to build your home in your own simple existence, not in friends, lovers, your career or material belongings, because these are things you will lose one day. That’s the natural order of this world. This is called the practice of detachment.

The way you get better at playing football is to play football.

Extreme right-wingers are known for giving God a bad name; extreme left-wingers are known for giving God a weak name. He's not as simple as conservative versus liberal, old versus new. His wings are balanced. God is both and neither.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

We never know how strongly we cling to objects until they are taken away, and he who thinks htat he is attached to nothing, is frequently grandly mistaken, being bound to a thousand things, unknown to himself.

I have rooted myself into this quiet place where I don’t need much to get by. I need my visions. I need my books. I need new thoughts and lessons, from older souls, bars, whisky, libraries; different ones in different towns. I need my music. I need my songs. I need the safety of somewhere to rest my head at night, when my eyes get heavy. And I need space. Lots of space. To run, and sing, and change around in any way I please—outer or inner—and I need to love. I need the space to love ideas and thoughts; creations and people—anywhere I can find—and I need the peace of mind to understand it.

The measure of wisdom is in simplicity, humility, and in friendliness.

Listening to the siren song of more, we are deaf to the still small voice waiting in our soul to whisper, ‘You’re enough.

Everything should be made as simple as possible ... but not simpler.

In the days of Prismatic Colornot in the days of Adam and Eve, but when Adam was alone; when there was no smoke and color was fine, not with the refinement of early civilization art, but because of its originality; with nothing to modify it but the mist that went up, obliqueness was a variation of the perpendicular, plain to see and to account for: it is no longer that; nor did the blue-red-yellow band of incandescence that was color keep its stripe

Transforming the complex to the simple is pure genius.

It could be said of him that while others chased the mirage of happiness, he was happy with being content.

The past, the present, the future –The floodgates of time wait for Her footsteps Yet She resides forever –In the shape of a rising dawn,In the sound of a humming bee,In the chirping of a flying bird,In the birth of a newborn,In the blissful serenity of Nature;For Happiness is but a reflection of simplicity.

In literature, too, we admire prose in which a small and astutely arranged set of words has been constructed to carry a large consignment of ideas. 'We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others,' writes La Rochefoucauld in an aphorism which transports us with an energy and exactitude comparable to that of Maillard bridge. The Swiss engineer reduces the number of supports just as the French writer compacts into a single line what lesser minds might have taken pages to express. We delight in complexity to which genius has lent an appearance of simplicity. (p 207)

He loved the sea for deep-seated reasons: the hardworking artist's need for repose, the desire to take shelter from the demanding diversity of phenomena in the bosom of boundless simplicity, a propensity—proscribed and diametrically opposed to his mission in life and for that very reason seductive—a propensity for the unarticulated, the immoderate, the eternal, for nothingness. To repose in perfection is the desire of all those who strive for excellence, and is not nothingness a form of perfection?

A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace.

The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don't.

It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.

And... a bed. A bed and a blanket to cover them, a blanket that was theirs together.

Life can be simple, it ain't easy. So don't take the easy option. Challenge the resistance, challenge yourself, become great

I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.

It’s as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are.

Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.

It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas.

Contentment is joy of life.

When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hostility to this world, came over him...It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labor. God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward...Levin had often admired this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy for the people who lived this life, but that day for the first time...the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life.

The world was beautiful when looked at in this way—without any seeking, so simple, so childlike.

At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die but do not seem to make a "problem" of it.

There is a world of difference between being clever and being right.

Sophistication is not science people, simplicity is.

All the great things are simple and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom justice honor duty mercy hope.

Despite all our amazing ability, ingenuity, technology and industry humans are the one species who have not mastered the art of simplicity.

Life is simple. You just have to stop trying to figure it out.

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. (53)(Quote is actually Robert A F Thurman but Huston Smith, who only wrote the introduction to my edition, seems to be given full credit for this text.)

The way towards simplicity is through outrage.

I just take my three swings and go sit on the bench. I don't ever want to mess up my swing.

Free yourself from the complexities of your life! A life of simplicity and happiness awaits you.

Let us be the joy to find the joyLet us be the love to find the loveLet us be kind to find kindnessLet us be happy to find happiness.Let us be simple to find simplicityLet us be modest to find modestyLet us feel to comprehend Let us listen to understand Let us live our life to beLet us close our eyes to see.

In human character, simplicity doesn't exist except among simpletons.