Quotes about simplicity

Source: The Grand Design

Cited in Rules for methodizing the Apocalypse, Rule 9, from a manuscript published in The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974) by Frank E. Manuel, <!-- Oxford University Press -->p. 120, quoted in Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1983) by Richard S. Westfall, p. 326, in Fables of Mind: An Inquiry Into Poe's Fiction (1987) by Joan Dayan, p. 240, and in Everything Connects: In Conference with Richard H. Popkin (1999) by Richard H. Popkin, James E. Force, and David S. Katz, p. 124
Context: It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must it be in seeking to understand these visions.

“Wisconsin: Flambeau”, p. 113.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

Swarup, Ram (2000). Meditations: Yogas, gods, religions. p. 196

Source: No Longer Human

Sometimes presented in paraphrased form, such as &quot;Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing&quot; https://books.google.com/books?id=5Za7o6teOHoC&amp;pg=PR18&amp;dq=%22example+is+not+the+main+thing%22+schweitzer&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjFh4m9vqvMAhUG02MKHRqZDtsQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&amp;q=%22example%20is%20not%20the%20main%20thing%22%20&amp;f=false. <br class="br">God&#x27;s Own Man (1952)

Allegories of the Sacred Laws (Legum allegoriae), Book I, §2; tr. C. D. Yonge, The works of Philo Judaeus (1854), Vol. 1, pp. 52–53.

Christ's Object Lessons (1900)
Context: Through the creation we are to become acquainted with the Creator. The book of nature is a great lesson book, which in connection with the Scriptures we are to use in teaching others of His character, and guiding lost sheep back to the fold of God. As the works of God are studied, the Holy Spirit flashes conviction into the mind. It is not the conviction that logical reasoning produces; but unless the mind has become too dark to know God, the eye too dim to see Him, the ear too dull to hear His voice, a deeper meaning is grasped, and the sublime, spiritual truths of the written word are impressed on the heart.
In these lessons direct from nature, there is a simplicity and purity that makes them of the highest value. All need the teaching to be derived from this source. In itself the beauty of nature leads the soul away from sin and worldly attractions, and toward purity, peace, and God.

Source: The Hour of the Star

Variant: Progress is a man´s ability to comlicate simplicity.

Source: The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

§ 129
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
Context: The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something — because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. — And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.

Source: Walden

Source: The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life

Source: War and Peace

Cited in Rules for methodizing the Apocalypse, Rule 9, from a manuscript published in The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974) by Frank E. Manuel, p. 120, as quoted in Socinianism And Arminianism : Antitrinitarians, Calvinists, And Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Europe (2005) by Martin Mulsow, Jan Rohls, p. 273.
As quoted in God in the Equation : How Einstein Transformed Religion (2002) by Corey S. Powell, p. 29
Variant: Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 545.
Source: The Imitation of Christ
Context: Simplicity and purity are the two wings by which a man is lifted above all earthly things. Simplicity is in the intention — purity in the affection. Simplicity tends to God,— purity apprehends and tastes Him.

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 37.

Her views on the ancient art of Samurai, quoted in &quot;Japan (1916-20)&quot;, also in The Modern Review, Volume 23 by Ramananda Chatterjee (1918) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=fa4mAQAAIAAJ, p. 69

Letter to Saint-Venant (1845) as quoted by Michael J. Crowe, A History of Vector Analysis: The Evolution of the Idea of a Vectorial System (1967)

Further Records, 1848-1883, vol. 1; entry dated January 20, 1875 (1891).

The Life, Martyrdom, and Selections from the Writings of Thomas Cranmer https://books.google.com/books?id=FvNeAAAAcAAJ&amp;pg=PA3&amp;lpg=PA3&amp;dq=The+Life,+Martyrdom,+and+Selections+from+the+Writings+of+Thomas+Cranmer+...&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=LbXiMjz5Zp&amp;sig=0pi5SHuxfdt_YUoiJcxvLgr7x5E&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjzmZL_wsfaAhVl6YMKHWubBkcQ6AEILDAB by Thomas Cranmer, p.139-142, (1809)

Huey Long, U.S. Senate floor speech, March 5, 1935

From Gibbs's letter accepting the Rumford Medal (1881). Quoted in A. L. Mackay, Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (London, 1994).

Letter Nine (4 November 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts

Ive explaining the design philosophy behind iOS 7 in its product video, shown at WWDC 2013.

In The Formation Of The Ashram http://www.searchforlight.org/Sriaurobindo_Ashram1.htm, also in VII. The Formation of The Ashram http://www.sriaurobindoashram.com/Content.aspx?ContentURL=/_StaticContent/SriAurobindoAshram/-04%20Centers/India/Pondicherry/Sri%20Aurobindo%20Society/Wilfried/The%20Mother%20-%20A%20Short%20Biography/-010_The%20Formation%20of%20the%20Ashram.htm pp.39-40

Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975) vol. 3, p. 30.
Criticism

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 609
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 26

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 411.

No published occurrence of such an attribution has yet been located prior to one in Wisdom Through the Ages : Book Two (2003) by Helen Granat, p. 225; this was used as an early slogan at Apple Computer in 1984, but the earliest occurence yet located is in The Recognitions (1955) by William Gaddis, p. 457:
Stop being so God Damn humble … You know God damn well that … that humility is defiance … simplicity today is sophisticated … simplicity is the ultimate sophistication today.
Disputed

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 1 - The Vision

Everything must be doubted <br class="br"> Marx&#x27;s replies to a set of questions given to him by his daughters Jenny and Laura in 1865 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/04/01.htm

Article written as guest columnist for Arlene Dahl, headlined &quot;Rita Hayworth Sees Simplicity As Part Of Beauty&quot; in The Toledo Blade (11 March 1964) http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&amp;dat=19640311&amp;id=AP1OAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=WAEEAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=7406,218312

Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 2, as translated by David Luke

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

Light (1919), Ch. XV - An Apparition

#434
The Furrow (1986)

p, 125
Arithmetica Universalis (1707)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 544.

Letter 35
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

&quot;A New Calendar,&quot; The Pall Mall Gazette http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/1307/ (February 17, 1887)

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 96. Compare: "The elegant simplicity of the three per cents", Lord Stowell, in Lives of the Lord Chancellors (Campbell), Vol. x, Chap. 212.

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn

Source: Life and Doctrine, Ch. XVIII

as quoted in an interview by Matthew Chalmers: [Model physicist, CERN Courier, 13 October 2017, http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/70138]

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 9

II 12 as translated by Dorothea Waley Singer (1950)
De immenso (1591)

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XV

Arithmetica Universalis (1707)
Context: The Circle is a Geometrical Line, not because it may be express'd by an Æquation, but because its Description is a Postulate. It is not the Simplicity of the Æquation, but the Easiness of the Description, which is to determine the Choice of our Lines for the Construction of Problems. For the Æquation that expresses a Parabola, is more simple than That that expresses a Circle, and yet the Circle, by reason of its more simple Construction, is admitted before it. The Circle and the Conick Sections, if you regard the Dimension of the Æquations, are of the fame Order, and yet the Circle is not number'd with them in the Construction of Problems, but by reason of its simple Description, is depressed to a lower Order, viz. that of a right Line; so that it is not improper to express that by a Circle that may be expressed by a right Line. But it is a Fault to construct that by the Conick Sections which may be constructed by a Circle. Either therefore you must take your Law and Rule from the Dimensions of Æquations as observ'd in a Circle, and so take away the Distinction between Plane and Solid Problems; or else you must grant, that that Law is not so strictly to be observ'd in Lines of superior Kinds, but that some, by reason of their more simple Description, may be preferr'd to others of the same Order, and may be number'd with Lines of inferior Orders in the Construction of Problems.<!--p.228

Book V, 5.105-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book V

Arithmetica Universalis (1707)
Context: In Constructions that are equally Geometrical, the most simple are always to be preferr'd. This Law is so universal as to be without Exception. But Algebraick Expressions add nothing to the Simplicity of the Construction; the bare Descriptions of the Lines only are here to be consider'd and these alone were consider'd by those Geometricians who joyn'd a Circle with a right Line. And as these are easy or hard, the Construction becomes easy or hard: And therefore it is foreign to the Nature of the Thing, from any Thing else to establish Laws about Constructions. Either therefore let us, with the Antients, exclude all Lines besides the Circle, and perhaps the Conick Sections, out of Geometry, or admit all, according to the Simplicity of the Description. If the Trochoid were admitted into Geometry, we might, by its Means, divide an Angle in any given Ratio. Would you therefore blame those who should make Use of this Line... and contend that this Line was not defin'd by an Æquition, but that you must make use of such Lines as are defin'd by Æquations? <!--pp.228-229

The Idiot (1868–9)
Context: I have never in my life met a man like him for noble simplicity, and boundless truthfulness. I understood from the way he talked that anyone who chose could deceive him, and that he would forgive anyone afterwards who had deceived him, and that was why I grew to love him.

Book II, 1395b.27
Rhetoric

Arithmetica Universalis (1707), p.232

Quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations (2005) by Jon R. Stone, p. 188
Spoken by Hus as he was being burned at the stake and saw an elderly peasant adding wood to the fire

Conversation with Einstein, as quoted in Bittersweet Destiny: The Stormy Evolution of Human Behavior by Del Thiessen
Context: If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty—by forms I am referring to coherent systems of hypothesis, axioms, etc.—to forms that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are "true," that they reveal a genuine feature of nature... You must have felt this too: The almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared.

The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18835/18835-h/18835-h.htm#CHAPTER_VII. <br class="br">1910s <br class="br">Context: The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, &quot;Seek simplicity and distrust it.&quot;

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
Context: There are all those things against you. Against you and your great common interests which as you dimly saw are the same thing in effect as justice, there are not only the sword-wavers, the profiteers, and the intriguers.
There is not only the prodigious opposition of interested parties — financiers, speculators great and small, armorplated in their banks and houses, who live on war and live in peace during war, with their brows stubbornly set upon a secret doctrine and their faces shut up like safes.
There are those who admire the exchange of flashing blows, who hail like women the bright colors of uniforms; those whom military music and the martial ballads poured upon the public intoxicate as with brandy; the dizzy-brained, the feeble-minded, the superstitious, the savages.
There are those who bury themselves in the past, on whose lips are the sayings only of bygone days, the traditionalists for whom an injustice has legal force because it is perpetuated, who aspire to be guided by the dead, who strive to subordinate progress and the future and all their palpitating passion to the realm of ghosts and nursery-tales.
With them are all the parsons, who seek to excite you and to lull you to sleep with the morphine of their Paradise, so that nothing may change. There are the lawyers, the economists, the historians — and how many more? — who befog you with the rigmarole of theory, who declare the inter-antagonism of nationalities at a time when the only unity possessed by each nation of to-day is in the arbitrary map-made lines of her frontiers, while she is inhabited by an artificial amalgam of races; there are the worm-eaten genealogists, who forge for the ambitious of conquest and plunder false certificates of philosophy and imaginary titles of nobility. The infirmity of human intelligence is short sight. In too many cases, the wiseacres are dunces of a sort, who lose sight of the simplicity of things, and stifle and obscure it with formulae and trivialities. It is the small things that one learns from books, not the great ones.
And even while they are saying that they do not wish for war they are doing all they can to perpetuate it. They nourish national vanity and the love of supremacy by force. "We alone," they say, each behind his shelter, "we alone are the guardians of courage and loyalty, of ability and good taste!" Out of the greatness and richness of a country they make something like a consuming disease. Out of patriotism — which can be respected as long as it remains in the domain of sentiment and art on exactly the same footing as the sense of family and local pride, all equally sacred — out of patriotism they make a Utopian and impracticable idea, unbalancing the world, a sort of cancer which drains all the living force, spreads everywhere and crushes life, a contagious cancer which culminates either in the crash of war or in the exhaustion and suffocation of armed peace.
They pervert the most admirable of moral principles. How many are the crimes of which they have made virtues merely by dowering them with the word "national"? They distort even truth itself. For the truth which is eternally the same they substitute each their national truth. So many nations, so many truths; and thus they falsify and twist the truth.
Those are your enemies. All those people whose childish and odiously ridiculous disputes you hear snarling above you — "It wasn't me that began, it was you!" — "No, it wasn't me, it was you!" — "Hit me then!" — "No, you hit me!" — those puerilities that perpetuate the world's huge wound, for the disputants are not the people truly concerned, but quite the contrary, nor do they desire to have done with it; all those people who cannot or will not make peace on earth; all those who for one reason or another cling to the ancient state of things and find or invent excuses for it — they are your enemies!
They are your enemies as much as those German soldiers are to-day who are prostrate here between you in the mud, who are only poor dupes hatefully deceived and brutalized, domestic beasts. They are your enemies, wherever they were born, however they pronounce their names, whatever the language in which they lie. Look at them, in the heaven and on the earth. Look at them, everywhere! Identify them once for all, and be mindful for ever!

Salutation of the Virtues
Context: Hail, queen wisdom! May the Lord save thee with thy sister holy pure simplicity!
O Lady, holy poverty, may the Lord save thee with thy sister holy humility!
O Lady, holy charity, may the Lord save thee with thy sister holy obedience!
O all ye most holy virtues, may the Lord, from whom you proceed and come, save you!
There is absolutely no man in the whole world who can possess one among you unless he first die.
He who possesses one and does not offend the others, possesses all; and he who offends one, possesses none and offends all; and every one [of them] confounds vices and sins.
Holy wisdom confounds Satan and all his wickednesses.
Pure holy simplicity confounds all the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the flesh.
Holy poverty confounds cupidity and avarice and the cares of this world.
Holy humility confounds pride and all the men of this world and all things that are in the world.
Holy charity confounds all diabolical and fleshly temptations and all fleshly fears.
Holy obedience confounds all bodily and fleshly desires and keeps the body mortified to the obedience of the spirit and to the obedience of one's brother and makes a man subject to all the men of this world and not to men alone, but also to all beasts and wild animals, so that they may do with him whatsoever they will, in so far as it may be granted to them from above by the Lord.

Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi
Context: I had seen Jesus Christ on the margin of the lake. He came like an ordinary man along the path. There is no halo round his head. He is only disclosed by his pallor and his gentleness. Planes of light draw near and mass themselves and fade away around him. He shines in the sky, as he shone on the water. As they have told of him, his beard and hair are the color of wine. He looks upon the immense stain made by Christians on the world, a stain confused and dark, whose edge alone, down on His bare feet, has human shape and crimson color. In the middle of it are anthems and burnt sacrifices, files of hooded cloaks, and of torturers, armed with battle-axes, halberds and bayonets; and among long clouds and thickets of armies, the opposing clash of two crosses which have not quite the same shape. Close to him, too, on a canvas wall, again I see the cross that bleeds. There are populations, too, tearing themselves in twain that they may tear themselves the better; there is the ceremonious alliance, "turning the needy out of the way," of those who wear three crowns and those who wear one; and, whispering in the ear of Kings, there are gray-haired Eminences, and cunning monks, whose hue is of darkness.
I saw the man of light and simplicity bow his head; and I feel his wonderful voice saying:
"I did not deserve the evil they have done unto me."
Robbed reformer, he is a witness of his name's ferocious glory. The greed-impassioned money-changers have long since chased Him from the temple in their turn, and put the priests in his place. He is crucified on every crucifix.

Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975)
Context: When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity. The classical man is just a bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow — you are not understanding yourself.

Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light
Context: It is not enough to speak; you must know words. When you have said, "I am in pain," or when you have said, "I am right," you have said nothing in reality, you have only spoken to yourself. The real presence of truth is not in every word of truth, because of the wear and tear of words, and the fleeting multiplicity of arguments. One must have the gift of persuasion, of leaving to truth its speaking simplicity, its solemn unfoldings. It is not I who will be able to speak from the depths of myself. The attention of men dazzles me when it rises before me. The very nakedness of paper frightens me and drowns my looks. Not I shall embellish that whiteness with writing like light. I understand of what a great tribune's sorrow is made; and I can only dream of him who, visibly summarizing the immense crisis of human necessity in a work which forgets nothing, which seems to forget nothing, without the blot even of a misplaced comma, will proclaim our Charter to the epochs of the times in which we are, and will let us see it. Blessed be that simplifier, from whatever country he may come, — but all the same, I should prefer him, at the bottom of my heart, to speak French.

Arithmetica Universalis (1707), p.251

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 545.

Source: Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole, p. 64.
Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?
1980s
Source: EWD648.

Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 71

Source: Shades of Grey

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Source: Favorite Poems

Source: Dreamtigers

Source: The Selfish Gene

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

Source: The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

Source: The Pilgrimage

Source: The Power of Positive Thinking

Source: English, August: An Indian Story

New York Magazine (November 28, 1983), p. 53.

Source: The Song of Achilles

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Source: The Amulet of Samarkand