Elegant Simplicity Quotes & Sayings

As you know, shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is ... how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that. — Trevanian

A short story can be packed with meaning and impact, with the concentrated density of a collapsed star, but should preferably also have a kind of elegant simplicity. — Jeffrey Thomas

Avoid fragmentation: Find your focus and seek simplicity. Purposeful living calls for elegant efficiency and economy of effort-expanding the minimum time and energy necessary to achieve desired goals. — Dan Millman

For us to deem a work of architecture elegant, it is hence not enough that it look simple: we must feel that the simplicity it displays has been hard won, that it flows from the resolution of demanding technical or natural predicament. Thus we call the Shaker staircase in Pleasant Hill elegant because we know
without ever having constructed one ourselves
that a staircase is a site complexity, and that combinations of treads, risers and banisters rarely approach the sober intelligibility of the Sharkers' work. We deem a modern Swiss house elegant because we not how seamlessly its windows have been joined to their concrete walls, and how neatly the usual clutter of construction has been resolved away. We admire starkly simple works that we intuit would, without immense effort, have appeared very complicated. (p 209) — Alain De Botton

Who am I?" My first spoken words.
"No one," she said. "Nosoul. — Jodi Meadows

With all the care that women do and all the money we spend to maintain our hair, men can at least take the time to wash their face with a simple inexpensive product that will soften their facial hair so they're not hurting us when we go in for a kiss. Trust me, guys, women will want to kiss you more if you take care of your facial hair. — Adrianne Palicki

Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is ... how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that." Nicholai's imagination was galvanized by the concept of shibumi. No other ideal had ever touched him so. "How does one achieve this shibumi, sir?" "One does not achieve it, one ... discovers it. And only a few men of infinite refinement ever do that. Men like my friend Otake-san." "Meaning that one must learn a great deal to arrive at shibumi?" "Meaning, rather, that one must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity. — Trevanian

Affected simplicity is an elegant imposture. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Elegant in its simplicity and practicality, Lee has distilled many powerful leadership strategies into the lessons many of us learned as children. They are no less relevant to our working lives. At its core, Creating Magic is a collection of stories that reminds us to demonstrate care and respect for every member of the team and to focus our efforts not our ourselves but on the people we lead. — George Bodenheimer

An elegant simplicity is an understated, organic aesthetic that contrasts with the excess of consumerist lifestyles. Drawing from influences ranging from Zen to the Quakers, it celebrates natural materials and clean, functional expressions, such as are found in many of the hand-made arts and crafts from this community. — Duane Elgin

Beneath all the wealth of detail in a geological map lies an elegant, orderly simplicity. — John Tuzo Wilson

Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle. — Edward Witten

The events in Prague, together with the Berlin blockade, convinced the European recipients of American economic assistance that they needed military protection as well: that led them to request the creation of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which committed the United States for the first time ever to the peacetime defense of Western Europe. — John Lewis

If you have to do with one who is unquestionably a slanderer, do not excuse him by calling him frank and free-spoken; do not call one who is notoriously vain, liberal and elegant; do not call dangerous levities mere simplicity; do not screen disobedience under the name of zeal; or arrogance, of frankness; or evil intimacy, of friendship. No, my friends, we must never, in our wish to shun slander, foster or flatter vice in others: but we must call evil evil, and sin sin, and so doing we shall serve God's glory. — Saint Francis De Sales

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness. — Bill Bryson

How true,' returned the measured, featureless voice. 'I would chuckle in amused agreement, but the laughter switches of my translator have been malfunctioning for the past six hours. You understand.'

'Certainly,' I said. And somehow felt much more comfortable. — Samuel R. Delany

The beauty of Florence made up for many ugly things he saw in his work. (Commissario Garini's view of Florence,Italy.) — Beate Boeker

True simplicity is elegant. — E.L. Konigsburg

Human happiness, true prosperity and joyful living can only emerge from a life of elegant simplicity, embedded in the arts and crafts. — Satish Kumar

Learn from the purity of nature. — Frederick Lenz

If you practice inaction, nothing will be left undone: For the way to acquire lordship over society is by invariably not interfering. — Laozi

Elegant as simplicity, and warm As ecstasy. — William Cowper

There is an English expression: 'high-maintenance girlfriend,'" Csongor remarked. "Now, of course, Zula is not my girlfriend. Probably never would be, even if all this shit were not happening. And I think that if she were my girlfriend? She would not be high maintenance at all! She is just not that type of girl. However. Because of circumstances, today she is the most high-maintenance girlfriend since Cleopatra. — Neal Stephenson

I think my parents had in mind that I would settle down at quite a young age, but I decided that being a housewife in a big country house wasn't for me. I wanted to leave the country, head for London and see what the world had to offer. — Alison Jackson

More than nine-tenths of all literate men and women certainly read nothing but newspapers, and consequently model their orthography, grammar and style almost exclusively on them and even, in their simplicity, regard the murdering of language which goes on in them as brevity of expression, elegant facility and ingenious innovation; indeed, young people of the unlearned professions in general regard the newspaper as an authority simply because it is something printed. For this reason, the state should, in all seriousness, take measures to ensure that the newspapers are altogether free of linguistic errors. A — Arthur Schopenhauer

But one must know where one stands, and where the others wish to go. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Filipinos are not worse than any other colonized people except that our colonization was a little longer, and the independence movement was always dictated in political terms, never in social ones. We borrowed terms, but we didn't understand them. — Ferdinand Marcos

Elegant writers depict intricacy with simplicity. — Coco J. Ginger

Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code. — Eric S. Raymond