Simplest Quotes - Page 2

• You know that things aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them to feel sorry for you.

  Nick Hornby

  Sorry, People, Asking

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• You live your life like it’s a rare treasure to be savored. You take pleasure from the simplest of things and you never take them for granted. I saw the joy on your face and the life in your eyes when you cradled the permits to your chest. I’ve never seen anything lovelier. I actually thought you would cry just from the joy of touching them. I’ve been numb all my life, Megeara, but you…you feel on a level that I can’t even imagine, and for a little while I wanted to feel that, too. (Arik)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Eye, Joy, Live Your Life

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• Come on back and we’ll see if you remember the simplest thing of all – how it is to be children, secure in belief and thus afraid of the dark.

  Stephen King

  Children, Dark, Belief

  Stephen King (2016). “It: A Novel”, p.908, Simon and Schuster

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• I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Truth, Lying, Science

  "What is Art?". Book by Leo Tolstoy, Ch. 14, 1897.

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• A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward.

  Phillips Brooks

  God, Prayer, Wish

  Phillips Brooks (1838). “Sermons”, p.299

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• Because music, like color, or a cloud, is neither intelligent nor unintelligent - it just is. The chord, the simplest building block for even the tritest, silliest chart song, is a beautiful, perfect, mysterious thing, and when an ill-read, uneducated, uncultured, emotionally illiterate boor puts a couple of them together, he has every chance of creating something wonderful and powerful. All I ask of music is that is sounds good.

  Nick Hornby

  Beautiful, Song, Couple

  Nick Hornby (2003). “31 songs”, Viking Books

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• In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Grease, Wheels, Flattery

  Leo Tolstoy (2011). “War and Peace: Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky”, p.29, Vintage

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• Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.

  Ayn Rand

  Religious, Animal, Men

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• After all, is it not the way we humans shape the universe, shape time itself? Do we not take the raw stuff of chaos and impose a beginning, middle, and end on it, like the simplest and most profound of folktales, to reflect the shapes of our own tiny lives? And if the physicists are right, that the physical world changes as it is observed, and we are its only known observers, then might we not be bending the entire chaotic universe, the eternal, ever-active Now, to fit that familiar form?

  Tad Williams

  Profound, Bending, World

  Tad Williams (2002). “Otherland 4: Sea of Silver Light”, p.584, Penguin

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• The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful then a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Wise, Prayer, Powerful

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• I have set off and found that there is no end to even the simplest journey of the mind. I begin, and straight away a hundred alternative routes present themselves. I choose one, no sooner begin, than a hundred more appear. Every time I try to narrow down my intent I expand it, and yet those straits and canals still lead me to the open sea, and then I realize how vast it all is, this matter of the mind. I am confounded by the shining water and the size of the world.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Journey, Sea, Water

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.115, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I prefer by far the warmth and softness to mere brilliancy and coldness. Some people remind me of sharp dazzling diamonds. Valuable but lifeless and loveless. Others, of the simplest field flowers, with hearts full of dew and with all the tints of celestial beauty reflected in their modest petals.

  Anais Nin

  Love, Flower, Heart

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• The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species.

  Warren Ellis

  Running, Space Flight, Way

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• The simplest fix for better grilling is to line the inside of your barbecue with tin foil. It dramatically affects how evenly the heat is distributed. That crusty black hibachi or Weber grill is doing your food no favors.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Black, Tin, Lines

  www.forbes.com. February 25, 2011.

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• Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather uses is comfort. So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish.

  Alice Sebold

  Quilts, Humble, Hands

  Alice Sebold (2014). “The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic”, p.229, Pan Macmillan

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• The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

  Ernest Renan

  Life, Education, Teaching

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• As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Race, Civilization

  Charles Darwin (2016). “The Descent of Man: the Evolution”, p.114, VM eBooks

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• On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn't make it less true.

  James Surowiecki

  Moving, Writing, Play

  "Face Time". www.newyorker.com. March 18, 2013.

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• Your time on this earth is a gift to be used wisely. Don't squander your words or your thoughts. Consider that even the simplest actions you take for your lives matter beyond measure...and they matter forever.

  Andy Andrews

  Life, Forever, Earth

  Andy Andrews (2009). “The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs is a Little Perspective”, p.154, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.

  Frances Wright

  Errors, Practice, Mind

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• The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.

  Thomas Sowell

  Way, Economy, Explanation

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.97, Basic Books

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• The safest course was actually the simplest-do nothing at all and hope everything turned out for the best. It wasn't a great plan, but it had the benefits of simplicity and a long tradition.

  Jasper Fforde

  Life, Long, Simplicity

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• The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow- witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Inspirational, Intelligent, Men

  graf Leo Tolstoy, Constance Garnett, David Taffel (2005). “The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life”, p.45, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• Scientists often talk of parsimony (as in "the simplest explanation is probably correct," also known as Occam's razor), but we should not get seduced by the apparent elegance of argument from parsimony; this line of reasoning has failed in the past at least as many times as it has succeeded.

  David Eagleman

  Past, Razors, Lines

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.177, Canongate Books

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• The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

  C. S. Lewis

  Plato, Book, Greatness

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.217, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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