62 Quotes On Embracing Simplicity

In a world that often celebrates complexity and hustle, finding solace in simplicity can be a transformative experience. Embracing simplicity isn't about stripping life down to the bare essentials but discovering the profound beauty and contentment that can arise from focusing on what truly matters. Our curated collection of the top 62 quotes on embracing simplicity offers insights and inspiration from thinkers, writers, and dreamers who have found value in the uncomplicated. Whether you're seeking to declutter your mind, your space, or your soul, these quotes serve as gentle reminders that sometimes, less is indeed more. Dive in and let the wisdom of simplicity guide you to a more serene and meaningful way of living.

1. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” - Clare Boothe Luce

2. “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

3. “Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.” - Alexandre Dumas

4. “Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.” - John Maeda

5. “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” - Confucius

6. “Manifest plainness,Embrace simplicity,Reduce selfishness,Have few desires.” - Lao Tzu

7. “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” - Jack Kerouac

8. “If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.” - Albert Einstein

9. “Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.” - Langston Hughes

10. “There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.” - Leo Tolstoy

11. “It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.” - Bruce Lee

12. “We see a lot of feature-driven product design in which the cost of features is not properly accounted. Features can have a negative value to customers because they make the products more difficult to understand and use. We are finding that people like products that just work. It turns out that designs that just work are much harder to produce that designs that assemble long lists of features.” - Douglas Crockford

13. “The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.” - colum mccann

14. “Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

15. “The greatest step towards a life of simplicity is to learn to let go.” - Steve Maraboli

16. “Free yourself from the complexities of your life! A life of simplicity and happiness awaits you.” - Steve Maraboli

17. “Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.” - Joanne Harris

18. “Because . . . most of us think that the point is something to do with work, or kids, or family, or whatever. But you don't have any of that. There's nothing between you and despair, and you don't seem a very desperate person.' 'Too stupid.' 'You're not stupid. So why don't you ever put your head in the oven?' 'I don't know. There's always a new Nirvana album to look forward to, or something happening in NYPD Blue to make you want to watch the next episode.' 'Exactly.' 'That's the point? NYPD Blue? Jesus.' It was worse than he thought. 'No, no. The point is you keep going. You want to. So all the things that make you want to are the point. I don't know if you even realize it, but on the quiet you don't think life's too bad. You love things. Telly. Music. Food.” - Nick Hornby

19. “..things are never as complicated as they seem. It is only our arrogance that prompts us to find unnecessarily complicated answers to simple problems.” - Muhammad Yunus

20. “People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.” - Thomas Sowell

21. “You can never stay angry too long in the bush though. At least, that's what I think. It's not that it's soothing or restful, because it's not. What it does for me is get inside my body, inside my blood, and take me over. I don't know that I can describe it any better than that. It takes me over and I become part of it and it becomes part of me and I'm not very important, or at least no more important than a tree or a rock or a spider abseiling down a long thread of cobweb. As I wandered around, on that hot afternoon, I didn't notice anything too amazing or beautiful or mindbogglingly spectacular. I can't actually remember noticing anything out of the ordinary: just the grey-green rocks and the olive-green leaves and the reddish soil with its teeming ants. The tattered ribbons of paperbark, the crackly dry cicada shell, the smooth furrow left in the dust by a passing snake. That's all there ever is really, most of the time. No rainforest with tropical butterflies, no palm trees or Californian redwoods, no leopards or iguanas or panda bears.Just the bush.” - John Marsden

22. “Ask a true scientist a very profound question on his science, and he will besilent. Ask a true religious person a very simple question on his religion, and he will be frenzied.” - Kedar Joshi

23. “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

24. “ One of the purest souls ever to live on this fallen planet was Nicholas Herman, known as Brother Lawrence. He wrote very little, but what he wrote has seemed to several generations of Christians to be so rare and so beautiful as to deserve a place near the top among the world's great books of devotion. The writings of Brother Lawrence are the ultimate in simplicity; ideas woven like costly threads to make a pattern of great beauty. ” - A.W. Tozer

25. “When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman. He had no thought of being an artist at all. he sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lampost, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: "it is so beautiful I must show you how it looks." And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it. When I read this letter of Van Gogh's it comforted me very much and seemed to throw a clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about *design* and *balance* and getting *interesting planes* into your painting, and avoided, with the most astringent severity, showing the faintest *acedemical* tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and so on.But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it.And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care. ” - Brenda Ueland

26. “The Master said, “A true gentleman is one who has set his heart upon the Way. A fellow who is ashamed merely of shabby clothing or modest meals is not even worth conversing with.”(Analects 4.9)” - Confucius

27. “The Master said, “Wealth and honor are things that all people desire, and yet unless they are acquired in the proper way I will not abide them. Poverty and disgrace are things that all people hate, and yet unless they are avoided in the proper way I will not despise them. “If the gentleman abandons ren, how can he be worthy of that name? The gentleman does not violate ren even for the amount of time required to eat a meal. Even in times of urgency or distress, he does not depart from it.”(Analects 4.5)” - Confucius

28. “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

29. “At times his arrogance did resolve itself into simplicity, though it was difficult, especially for strangers, to distinguish these occasions.” - Patrick White

30. “A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace.” - Confucius

31. “My task is to simplify and then go deeper, making a commitment to what remains. That's what I've been after. To care and polish what remains till it glows and comes alive from loving care.” - Sue Bender

32. “Virtue is under certain circumstances merely an honorable form of stupidity: who could be ill-disposed toward it on that account? And this kind of virtue has not been outlived even today. A kind of sturdy peasant simplicity, which, however, is possible in all classes and can be encountered only with respect and a smile, believes even today that everything is in good hands, namely in the "hands of God"; and when it maintains this proportion with the same modest certainty as it would that two and two make four, we others certainly refrain from contradicting. Why disturb THIS pure foolishness? Why darken it with our worries about man, people, goal, future? And even if we wanted to do it, we could not. They project their own honorable stupidity and goodness into the heart of things (the old God, deus myops, still lives among them!); we others — we read something else into the heart of things: our own enigmatic nature, our contradictions, our deeper, more painful, more mistrustful wisdom.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

33. “Complex things are easy to do. Simplicity's the real challenge.” - Robert James Waller

34. “[Tea-masters] have given emphasis to our natural love of simplicity, and shown us the beauty of humility. In fact, through their teachings tea has entered the life of the people.” - Kakuzo Okakura

35. “You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts.” - Cochise ("Like Ironweed")

36. “But I should not have to explain to you how important it is for science and simplicity to coexist. One must not fear to be a little child again, when times of wonder are at hand.” - Jody Lynn Nye

37. “Simplicities are enormously complex. Consider the sentence "I love you".” - Richard O. Moore

38. “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.” - Edward Abbey

39. “Once we got to eating, the idea of happiness returned to me. Not the feeling, the idea. Would a regular girl be happy simply eating a hot meal with a great deal of chew to it? Maybe happiness is a simple thing. Maybe it's as simple as the salty taste of pork, and the vast deal of chewing in it, and how, when the chew is gone, you can still scrape at the bone with your bottom teeth and suck at the marrow.” - Franny Billingsley

40. “The role of genius is not to complicate the simple, but to simplify the complicated.” - Criss Jami

41. “A person with taste is merely one who can recognize the greatest beauty in the simplest things.” - Barbara Taylor Bradford

42. “We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.” - Ray Bradbury

43. “If we have a simple existence, we shall feel how happy and how fortunate we are. There are some people who are of the opinion that simplicity is almost tantamount to stupidity. But simplicity and stupidity are like the North Pole and the South Pole. One can be as simple as a child and, at the same time, one can have boundless knowledge, light and wisdom.” - Sri Chinmoy

44. “Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane--in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath--she had probably put herself in unnecessary danger.” - Amor Towles

45. “Love the moment for its simplicity, it may give or take nothing from you, but in the blinking of an eye it will have change so many things forever.” - Steven Redhead

46. “A rose lay open in full bloomand, looking from my garden room,I watched the sun-baked flower fill with rain.It seemed so fragile,resting there,and such a silence filled the air,the beauty of the moment caused me pain."What more?" I thought. "There must be more."As if in answer then, I sawone weighty drop that caused my rose to fall.It trembled, then cascaded downto earth just staining gentle brownand, since then, I've felt different.That's all.” - Julie Andrews

47. “I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing—to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics—Well, they can do whatever they wish.” - Isaac Asimov

48. “The Amish are islands of sanity in a whirlpool of change.” - Nancy Sleeth

49. “Take a walk outside - it will serve you far more than pacing around in your mind.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

50. “From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti

51. “A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.” - Joseph Conrad

52. “I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.” - Masanobu Fukuoka

53. “To say more while saying less is the secret of being simple.” - Dejan Stojanovic

54. “My mathematics is simple: one plus one = one.” - Dejan Stojanovic

55. “SIMPLICITY is practicing a lifestyle that is increasingly free of excess, greed, covetousness, and other forms of dependence on the things of this world. The Holy Spirit works through simplicity to release spiritual gifts such as hospitality, mercy, and giving... to live free of anxiety, and to better take care of this Earth.” - Siang-Yang Tan

56. “If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful, that is, full of joy. And what about our problems? When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.” - Richard J. Foster

57. “If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.- Mitchell translation” - Rainer Maria Rilke

58. “It's strange how the simple things in life go on while we become difficult.” - Richard Brautigan

59. “I have had to learn the simplest thingslast. Which made for difficulties.” - Charles Olsen

60. “I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.” - Victor Hugo

61. “There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

62. “The way towards simplicity is through outrage.” - William Golding