simplicity

1.

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

- Lee, Bruce

2.

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

- Bovee, Christian Nevell

3.

There comes a time when we must narrow our sphere of thought much, that we may truly enlarge it! we must, artificialised as we have been, return to the rudiments of life, to children's pleasures, that we may find easily, through their transparent simplicity, spiritual laws which we may apply to the more intricate spheres of art and science.

- MS. Letter. 1842.

4.

I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.

- James, Henry

5.

The price we pay for the complexity of life is too high. When you think of all the effort you have to put in --telephonic, technological and relational --to alter even the slightest bit of behavior in this strange world we call social life, you are left pining for the straightforwardness of primitive peoples and their physical work.

- Baudrillard, Jean

6.

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.

- Descartes, Rene

7.

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.

- Alford

8.

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

9.

Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.

- Jim Horning

10.

The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passion are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.

- Wilde, Oscar

11.

It is no good asking for a simple religion. Real things are not simple. They look simple, but they are not. The table I'm sitting at looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it is really made of - all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to my optic nerve and what it does to my brain - and, of course, you'll find that what we call'seeing a table'lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of. A child saying a child's prayer looks simple. And if you are content to stop there, well and good. But if you are not - and the modern world usually is not - if you want to go on and ask what is really happening - then you must be prepared for something difficult. If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something is not more simple.

- C. S. Lewis

12.

I don't understand complicated problems. I only understand simple ones.

- Deupree, Richard

13.

ARTLESSNESS, n. A certain engaging quality to which women attain by long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased to fancy it resembles the candid simplicity of his young.

- Ambrose Bierce

14.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

- Churchill, Winston

15.

I have always observed that to succeed in the world a person must seem simple, yet wise.

- Montesquieu, Charles De

16.

I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind.... I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. When I closed the second volume (of the Prophet's biography), I was sorry there was not more for me to read of that great life.

- Mahatma Gandhi

17.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

- Thoreau, Henry David

18.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

- Henry David Thoreau

19.

God always takes the simplest way.

- Einstein, Albert

20.

Never do anything standing that you can do sitting, or anything sitting that you can do lying down.

- Proverb, Chinese