Simplicity Quotes - Page 22

Complexity is acceptable as long as it is intelligible and necessary. We want to avoid needless complications.

In art, one does not aim for simplicity; one achieves it unintentionally as one gets closer to the real meaning of things.

Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.

Part of that, I think, is being able to tune out folly, as distinguished from recognizing wisdom. You've got whole categories of things you just bat away so your brain isn't cluttered with them. That way, you're better able to pick up a few sensible things to do.

If only simplicity were not the most difficult of all things. It consists of watching objectively the development of any fragment of fantasy.

The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity ... the ability to express the utmost with the minimum. It is the halfway cultivation that leads to ornamentation.

In normal life, 'simplicity' is synonymous with 'easy to do,' but when a chef uses the word, it means 'takes a lifetime to learn.'

Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.

Certain environments, certain modes of life, and certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification is one of them.

The motif must always be set down in a simple way, easily grasped and understood by the beholder. By the elimination of superfluous detail, the spectator should be led along the road that the artist indicates to him, and from the first be made to notice what the artist has felt.

In Zen, poverty is voluntary, and considered not really as poverty so much as simplicity, freedom, unclutteredness.

At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a "problem" of it.

Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world's great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province... Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.

The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.

And simple truth miscalled simplicity

Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer.

Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures.

No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.

The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.

We do need a 'new economy,' but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy.

You're here for a reason and it's not to hoard a lot of physical stuff.

Hatred also is short lived; but that which makes the splendor of the present and the glory of the future remains forever unforgotten here we bless your simplicity but do not envy your folly.

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.

When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.

Simplicity is the intention, purity in the affection; simplicity turns to God, purity unites with and enjoys him.