Quotes about Simplicity

If we are unwilling to admit the specific sins in our lives, those that bring us suffering and turmoil, we cannot be freed from them by God's mercy. It is easy for us to admit in a general way that we are sinners, but are we ready to admit every situation where we have done wrong? This is hard work, and we must overcome a great deal of fear by trusting in our Lord.

We sometimes hear people say, 'I'm only human.' We hear it in songs, in conversation, perhaps in confession. It sounds like an excuse in our fallen condition not to change. Therefore, let us challenge ourselves and others to be 'truly human' rather than 'only human.' To be truly human we must commit ourselves to rise above the bodiless powers with the Theotokos { The Virgin Mary } who is more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim in pursuit of the likeness of God.

Your Father in Christ,
Bishop JOSEPH
http://www.antiochianladiocese.org/

For the accomplished warrior, belief is not a form of strategy, nor is it borrowing the stories of previous warriors from books and stories. Trying to theorize and borrow ideas doesn’t seem to help. The notion of belief, or view, here is based on complete simplicity. Your view is not affected by liberalism or conservatism, nihilism or eternalism, at all. Your view is straightforward and simple; it is almost a cosmic domestic view. It is the notion of complete simplicity. When you meet a person, you don’t have to develop a whole style of how to view that person according to either the historic or present situation, the sociological context, his religious connections, or whatever it may be. You don’t have to go through all that. You can have a direct relationship, which is very simple, direct, and straightforward—extremely straightforward.

Science tends more and more to reveal to us the unity that underlies the diversity of nature.  We must have diversity in our practical lives; we must seize Nature by many handles.  But our intellectual lives demand unity, demand simplicity amid all this complexity.  Our religious lives demand the same.  Amid all the diversity of creeds and sects we are coming more and more to see that religion is one, that verbal differences and ceremonies are unimportant, and that the fundamental agreements are alone significant.  Religion as a key or passport to some other world has had its day; as a mere set of statements or dogmas about the Infinite mystery it has had its day.  Science makes us more and more at home in this world, and is coming more and more, to the intuitional mind, to have a religious value.  Science kills credulity and superstition but to the well-balanced mind it enhances the feeling of wonder, of veneration, and of kinship which we feel in the presence of the marvelous universe.  It quiets our fears and apprehensions, it pours oil upon the troubled waters of our lives, and reconciles us to the world as it is.

The essence of voluntary simplicity is living in a way what is outwardly simple and inwardly rich.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Being a coffee addict and living in Seattle is like being an alcoholic and having a studio apartment in the middle of a brewery.
And here in Seattle, you go into a coffee shop, and you get people who are ordering their double caffeinated cappuccino organic soy wheat free-range coffee bean grown in one-acre, you know, freedom-fighting plots in Colombia. But I like my coffee straight and black. I like it simple.

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

Simplicity can be very complex to achieve.

Keep it simple.

Independent travel does that, bringing temporarily together these wandering ships that would otherwise pass in the night. Relationships were mostly brief and sometimes downright fleeting. The barriers and masks of settled existence melted away, allowing strangers to become fast friends, if only for a day. We travellers needed that, having deliberately stepped away from the social safety net of family, school, work and community.

Simplicity is the only sensible policy when fast reactions are required in confused situations.

Our life has a boundary but there is no boundary to knowledge.
To use what has a boundary to pursue what is limitless is dangerous;
with this knowledge, if we still go after knowledge, we will run into trouble.
Do not do what is good in order to gain praise.
If you do what is bad be sure to avoid the punishment.
Follow the Middle Course, for this is the way to keep yourself together,
to sustain your life, to care for your parents and to live for many years.

Insomuch as you can be simple and humble, and you can want nothing more than to know and serve God, you can rise to the heights of spiriitual life.

"The less we have, the more room we have to live the right sized lives." from What we might learn to live without and why

Seek perfection in simplicty.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

It is all so very simple but this simplicity will not be seen via your familiar vision of looking at everything via the running commentary of your mind informancy. Awakening to the state of the natural man will only come about through you consciously choosing to move from this, that already is - and this you are very capable of.

Next time you are designing a process, a product, or a service, ask yourself, “What can I remove?” For most consumers, simplicity is more important than comprehensiveness (and complexity).

The concept of “taking away” is also a great time management technique.  In addition to your “to do” list, be sure to create a “don’t do” list.  Become masterful at killing products, eliminating non-value adding tasks, and removing old/pointless habits.

Have a PBS mind in an MTV world.

"Everything in moderation, kid. Everything in moderation."

"Everything in moderation, kid. Everything in moderation."

"Everything in moderation, kid. Everything in moderation."

The future belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous and enduring, and thus more intelligent, even competetive.

It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary.

To be free of the discriminating is to manifest miraculous awareness--awareness that is miraculously simple, miraculously unadorned.

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.

Loss and Possession, Death and Life are one.
There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.

Consider the lilies of the field,
How they grow;
They toil not, neither do they spin;
And yet I say unto you,
That even Solomon in all his glory
Was not arrayed like one of these

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life.  It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces.  The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can.  You reach a point where you're at the bottom of  hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth.  Why?  Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life.  It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces.  The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can.  You reach a point where you're at the bottom of  hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth.  Why?  Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish