Explore the wonderful quotes under this tag
Simplicity is the whole secret of well-being.
Sep 17, 2025
The world has become too full of many things, an over furnished room.
Do few things but do them well, simple joys are holy.
Live simply that others might simply live.
Whatever a man seeks, honors, or exalts more than God is the god of his idolatry.
Home is an invention on which no one has yet improved.
If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much - make it greedy, miserable and sick.
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
We will have to give up taking things for granted, even the apparently simple things.
To dig our heels in and say no to a present madness is a good thing, but to walk a new path and say yes is a better thing.
One can furnish a room very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in.
Medical experts now estimate that 80 percent of diseases are directly linked to frantic living.
The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.
A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.
Only great minds can afford a simple style.
Simplicity is an enduring habit within a soul that has grown impervious to evil thoughts.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.
To live without that enchantment of beauty is to interpret frugality and simple living with a puritan literalism
Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.
Poverty is mean and degrading to the human spirit, whereas a life of conscious simplicity can have both a beauty and a functional integrity that elevates the human spirit.
There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.
As a myth of national purpose and as a program for individual conduct, the simple life has, in a sense, served as the nation's conscience, reminding Americans of what the founders had hoped they would be and thereby providing a vivifying counterpoint to the excesses of materialist individualism.
Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.
Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
There must be more to life than having everything.
I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.
Now and then, living more with less means paying more money. It may mean buying better quality - leaving behind repetitive purchases of discount junk for one expensive, well-made, thoughtfully designed tool that will last.
Society, and the family as its psycho social agent, has to solve a difficult problem: How to break a person's will without his being aware of it? Yet by a complicated process of indoctrination, rewards, punishments, and fitting ideology, it solves this task by and large so well that most people believe they are following their own will and are unaware that their will itself is conditioned and manipulated.
I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.
We can make ourselves whole only by accepting our partiality, by living within our limits, by being humans not by trying to be gods.
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.
People say "I want peace." If you remove I (ego), and your want (desire), you are left with peace.
I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world.
The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God 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 of life.
The simplicity that all this presupposes is not easy to attain. I find that my life constantly threatens to become complex and divisive. A life of prayer is basically a very simple life. This simplicity, however, is the result of asceticism and effort: it is not a spontaneous simplicity.
Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
Happiness blooms naturally in the hearts of those who are inwardly free. It flows spontaneously, like a mountain spring after April showers, in minds that are contented with simple living.
Simplicity of living, if deliberately chosen, implies a compassionate approach to life. It means that we are choosing to live our daily lives with some degree of conscious appreciation of the condition of the rest of the world.
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
Design the life you want to live.
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness either enforced or voluntary.
About cars: They can list with faithful accuracy each model they acquired through the years, how much they paid for each one, its main faults, and why they traded it in - but they couldn't list as many close friends.
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.