Simplicity Quotes - Page 16

• 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, Benefits

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• But I am not perfect in my way of putting things Because I lack the divine simplicity Of being only what I appear to be.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Perfect, Way, Divine

  Fernando Pessoa (1971). “Selected poems by Fernando Pessoa: including poems by his heteronyms: Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis [and] Alvaro de Campos, as well as some of his English sonnets and selections from his letters”

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• As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Spiritual, Struggle, Mean

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• I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.

  Edward Abbey

  Sea, Sky, Perfect

  Edward Abbey (1984). “Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside”, p.147, Macmillan

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• Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Anniversary, Sweet

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “A Critic in Pall Mall”, p.227, Oscar Wilde

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• 

  If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined...

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "Walden". Book by Henry David Thoreau, 1854.

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• The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Men, World, Machinery

  Jorge Luis Borges (1964). “Dreamtigers”, p.50, University of Texas Press

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• But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They have one idea in mind: to be intelligent, which is really stupid. And when intelligence takes itself for its own goal, it operates very strangely: the proof that it exists is not to be found in the ingenuity or simplicity of what it produces, but in how obscurely it is expressed.

  Muriel Barbery

  Stupid, Intelligent, Thinking

  "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". Book by Muriel Barbery, September 2, 2013.

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• Jesus Christ and all the writers of the New Testament call us to break free of mammon lust and live in joyous trust...They point us toward a way of living in which everything we have we receive as a gift, and everything we have is cared for by God, and everything we have is available to others when it is right and good. This reality frames the heart of Christian simplicity. It is the means of liberation and power to do what is right and to overcome the forces of fear and avarice.

  Richard J. Foster

  Christian, Jesus, Heart

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• Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Good Morning, Nature, Good Day

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.61, Graphic Arts Books

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• I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity. They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints. And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within.

  Thomas Merton

  Kindness, Real, Thinking

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• By the light," he said, when he had mastered himself. "I think that beats singing a lullaby to a stormdog for simplicity and economy, Maerad. But I wish I had known that you simply had to blow at Hulls to get rid of them. It would have saved me a few scars.

  Alison Croggon

  Blow, Thinking, Light

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• In a rich moonlit garden, flowers open beneath the eyes of entire nations terrified to acknowledge the simplicity of the beauty of peace.

  Aberjhani

  Flower, Eye, Garden

  Aberjhani (2000). “I Made My Boy Out of Poetry”, p.78, Bright Skylark Book Products

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• If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty - by forms I am referring to coherent systems of hypothesis, axioms, etc. - to forms that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are "true," that they reveal a genuine feature of nature... You must have felt this too: The almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Thinking, Etc, Helping

  "Bittersweet Destiny: The Stormy Evolution of Human Behavior". Book by Del Thiessen, 1995.

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• To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

  Oscar Wilde

  Happiness, Lazy, Intellectual

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.996, Wordsworth Editions

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• The Consul felt a pang. Ah, to have a horse, and gallop away, singing, to someone you loved perhaps, into the heart of all the simplicity and peace in the world; was that not like the opportunity afforded man by life itself? Of course not. Still, just for a moment, it had seemed that it was.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Horse, Heart, Opportunity

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.280, Open Road Media

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• Truth resists simplicity.

  John Green

  Life

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• To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Gratitude, Acceptance, Riches

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Cicero (Illustrated)”, p.2333, Delphi Classics

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

  Albert Einstein

  Simple, Genius, Answers

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• This is the definition of happiness: a whole day stretching out ahead of me, beautiful in its emptiness and simplicity.

  Tabitha Suzuma

  Beautiful, Definitions, Emptiness

  Tabitha Suzuma (2012). “Forbidden”, p.340, Simon and Schuster

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• If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Inspiring, Nature, Ifs

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2010). “Letters to a Young Poet”, p.34, New World Library

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• I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our lord's living garden.

  Therese of Lisieux

  Beautiful, Sweet, Flower

  Saint Therese of Lisieux (2007). “The Story of the Soul”, p.26, Cosimo, Inc.

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• What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend. Arab Ruta (the same boy grown to manhood), wo sits before me, is my good friend, but the handclasp will be shorter, the smile will not be so eager on his lips, and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together.

  Beryl Markham

  Children, Good Friend, Boys

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• These people yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naive, spontaneous laughter. Harmony, radiance, and simplicity, all the essentials of spiritual beauty in the race they had marked for destructions.

  Nella Larsen

  Spiritual, Laughter, Pride

  Nella Larsen (2013). “Quicksand & Passing”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• Not gifted with genius but honestly holding his experiences deep in his heart, he kept his simplicity and humanity.

  Kobayashi Issa

  Heart, Humanity, Genius

  Issa Kobayashi, Nanao Sakaki, John Brandi, Jeff Bryan (1999). “Inch by inch: 45 haiku”, LA Alameda Pr

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