86 Simplicity Quotes

In a world brimming with complexity and constant change, simplicity holds a timeless allure. Whether it's the elegance of a minimalistic design, the clarity of straightforward communication, or the peace found in decluttered spaces, simplicity has the power to bring focus and calm to our daily lives. This blog post delves into a curated collection of 86 of the most profound and inspiring quotes on simplicity. These words of wisdom, from thinkers, writers, and visionaries across different eras, remind us of the beauty and strength found in simplicity. Let these quotes inspire you to embrace the essence of simplicity in every facet of your life.

1. “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

2. “When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.” - Walt Whitman

3. “Stephen Covey, in his book The 8th Habit, decribes a poll of 23,000 employees drawn from a number of companies and industries. He reports the poll's findings: * Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why * Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team's and their organization's goals * Only one in five said they had a clear "line of sight" between their tasks and their team's and organization's goals * Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals * Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work forThen, Covey superimposes a very human metaphor over the statistics. He says, "If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.” - Chip Heath & Dan Heath

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

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

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

7. “Vices are simply overworked virtues, anyway. Economy and frugality are to be commended but follow them on in an increasing ratio and what do we find at the other end? A miser! If we overdo the using of spare moments we may find an invalid at the end, while perhaps if we allowed ourselves more idle time we would conserve our nervous strength and health to more than the value the work we could accomplish by emulating at all times the little busy bee. I once knew a woman, not very strong, who to the wonder of her friends went through a time of extraordinary hard work without any ill effects. I asked her for her secret and she told me that she was able to keep her health, under the strain, because she took 20 minutes, of each day in which to absolutely relax both mind and body. She did not even “set and think.” She lay at full length, every muscle and nerve relaxed and her mind as quiet as her body. This always relieved the strain and renewed her strength.” - Laura Ingalls Wilder

8. “What's really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer. ” - William Albert Allard

9. “We two make banquets of the plainest fareIn every cup we find the thrill of pleasure... For us life always moves with lilting measureWe two, we two, we make our world, our pleasure” - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

10. “Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.” - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

11. “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

12. “Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.” - Albert Einstein

13. “While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.” - Brennan Manning

14. “The greatest ideas are the simplest.” - William Golding

15. “The point of simple living, for me has got to be:A soft place to landA wide margin of errorRoom to breatheLots of places to find baseline happiness in each and every day” - Leo Babauta

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

17. “Simplify your life. You don't grow spiritual, you shrink spiritual.” - Steve Maraboli

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. “There is a tonic strength, in the hour of sorrow and affliction, in escaping from the world and society and getting back to the simple duties and interests we have slighted and forgotten. Our world grows smaller, but it grows dearer and greater. Simple things have a new charm for us, and we suddenly realize that we have been renouncing all that is greatest and best, in our pursuit of some phantom.” - William George Jordan

21. “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

22. “The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. The the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dirt dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air.It was good reading light by then, so Augustus applied himself for a few minutes to the Prophets. He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors. They were mostly too long-winded, in his view, and he made no effort to read them verse for verse—he just had a look here and there, while the biscuits were browning.” - Larry McMurtry

23. “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

24. “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

25. “Why did they believe? Because they saw miracles. Things one man took as chance, a man of faith took as a sign. A loved one recovering from disease, a fortunate business deal, a chance meeting with a long lost friend. It wasn't the grand doctrines or the sweeping ideals that seemed to make believers out of men. It was the simple magic in the world around them.” - Brandon Sanderson

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. “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.” - Henry David Thoreau

31. “I delight to come to my bearings,—not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,—not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;—not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less,—not suppose a case, but take the case that is” - Henry David Thoreau

32. “Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.” - Rousseau Jean - Jacques

33. “Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.” - Isaac Newton

34. “Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.” - George Eliot

35. “It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town... he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.” - Henry David Thoreau

36. “You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger's passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.” - Italo Calvino

37. “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

38. “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

39. “We arrive in the rooms tangled up in a web of complexity and confusion. Our lives are unmanageable because our minds are unmanageable.” – p. 134” - Ray A

40. “Learning isn't acquiring knowledge so much as it is trimming information that has already been acquired.” - Criss Jami

41. “What is a genius? A person who demands little to nothing from others, but is often found extremely difficult to have around.” - Criss Jami

42. “What’s the most difficult thing you can do? Live simply. ‘Cause in order to be self-sufficient, you got to get well near everybody else to work for you.” - M.C. Humphreys

43. “Keep it simple and keep it real. The more basic we see our connection to God and Spirit, the easier it is to feel like you're a part of it.” - Jim Fargiano

44. “History as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.” - Jared Diamond

45. “It was our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome. . . . Children must early learn the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving. . . . The Indians in their simplicity literally give away all that they have—to relatives, to guests of other tribes or clans, but above all to the poor and the aged, from whom they can hope for no return.” - Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa)

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

47. “Every solution to every problem is simple. It's the distance between the two where the mystery lies.” - Derek Landy

48. “I want a simple, ordinary life . . . like humans enjoy.” - Deborah Harkness

49. “If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them completely away from simply telling it. By the time a person hears the news, it is not news at all, but opinion. It becomes a message of some kind, rather than fresh, straightforward news. Decency is the absence of strategy. It is of utmost importance to realize that the warrior’s approach should be simple-minded sometimes, very simple and straightforward. That makes it very beautiful: you having nothing up your sleeve; therefore a sense of genuineness comes through. That is decency.” - CHOGYAM TRUNGPA

50. “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

51. “These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraphs and kerosene and coal stoves -- they're good to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.” - Laura Ingalls Wilder

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

53. “In simplicity there is truth.” - River Phoenix

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

55. “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

56. “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

57. “Do you want to be happy?Then make your life as soulfully simple As sleeplessly breathing.” - Sri Chinmoy

58. “Wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ and to know that I love Him--this is all!” - Elizabeth Prentiss

59. “Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.” - G.K. Chesterton

60. “The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence.” - Swami Vivekananda

61. “It's easy to be heavy; hard to be light.” - G.K. Chesterton

62. “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.” - Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte

63. “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

64. “Penny knew also she loved the country for its beauty. Cities could be magnificent, astounding, fantastic, but they were not consistently beautiful and simple. Penny liked uncomplicated beauty.” - Dorothy Deming

65. “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.” - Richard J. Foster

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

67. “It’s as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are.” - David Levithan

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

69. “Mediocrity comforts the masses. Mediocrity is a likeable attribute.” - Shobhaa De

70. “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

71. “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

72. “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

73. “Do not let your grand ambitions stand in the way of small but meaningful accomplishments.” - Bryant McGill

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

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

76. “Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

77. “Simplicity is the most difficult of all concepts.” - Brian Herbert

78. “It was as simple as that - they met. As simple as only beautiful things can be beautiful, as only life-changing things, turning-point things, can be simple.("For The Rest Of Her Life")” - Cornell Woolrich

79. “The life of less, one bent on simplicity, and not needing or wanting anything other than what God has deemed good for you turns out to be all you could ever need or want.” - Hayley and Michael DiMarco

80. “You cannot pour more water into a full cup without causing a spillage.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

81. “Simplicity is a bliss that makes one comprehend.” - Criss Jami

82. “prepare your food in keeping with monastic traditions—simple, basic, healthy, balanced.” - Mary DeTurris Poust

83. “It is so dam difficult to be simple.” - Valquiria Oliveira

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

85. “Freedom is the realization that it is sufficient to simply be a human being.” - Bryant McGill

86. “We must plant trees, grow gardens instead of lawns, ride bicycles when we can and support responsible local businesses over big brands.” - Bryant McGill