“Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Iphigenia in Tauris
Act IV, sc. iv
Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787)
“And less is often more, as Lessing's Prince teaches us.”
Und minder ist oft mehr, wie Lessings Prinz uns lehrt.
"Neujahrswunsch", in Der Teutsche Merkur (January 1774) p. 4; translation from The Quote…Unquote Newsletter (October 1997) p. 3.
The phrase "Less is more" was later used by Robert Browning, and by Mies van der Rohe.
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Christoph Martin Wieland5
German writer, poet and publisher 1733–1813Related quotes
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781) French economist
§ 39
Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth (1766)
Context: All is more or less proper to serve as a common measure, in proportion as it is more or less in general use, of a more similar quality, and more easy to be divided into aliquot parts. All is more or less applicable for the purpose of a general pledge of exchange, in proportion as it is less susceptible of decay or alteration in quantity or quality.
“Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher
“We are all of us more or less the slaves of opinion.”
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer
"On Court-Influence" (January 3/January 10, 1818)
Political Essays (1819)
Curtis LeMay (1906–1990) American general and politician
Mission with LeMay: My Story (1965), p. 382.
“The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.”
Laozi book Tao Te Ching
Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 5, as interpreted by Stephen Mitchell (1992)
Context: The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.
“The more you live, the less useful it seems to have lived.”
Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)